New Way
by Band-Potter-Geek
Summary: First in the New Life series. Girls getting pulped on a college campus pulls a young woman with a bad back into the supernatural world when Sam and Dean Winchester bring her to Bobby's. Rated for language, mild gore. Originally posted on Mibba.
1. Chapter 1

Devon left her computer lab at 12:33. She had gotten two steps out of the building when something grabbed her. She didn't even have time to scream before she was ripped to shreds.

Rachel left her computer lab at 12:46 and found the remains by stepping squarely on the brain.

She stared at the blood and gore, mouth open. What the hell? What was all that? She refused to believe what she was seeing.

Then her eyes got through to her. She knew what it was. It was a body. Horribly mangled, yes, but a body.

She pulled her phone out of her bag, taking deep breaths to calm her palpitating heart. She pressed the buttons with fingers that shook so badly she misdialed the first three times she tried. Finally, she got the number right.

"911, what is your emergency?"

The news vans showed up within ten minutes of the police arriving.

Sam and Dean had just wrapped up a vengeful spirit that had been haunting the tourist trap named after her. The Belle Boyd house was smack dab in the center of town; Belle Boyd had been murdered by the Union troops she'd been spying on during the Civil War. The hamlet known as Front Royal was, with 13000 people, the largest town for forty miles in any direction. The biggest store within town limits was a K-Mart, which Dean and Sam had gawked at. That business had gone belly-up almost a decade prior, but here it still thrived.

Sam fiddled with the radio dial - the town was so out-of-date the motels didn't even have televisions - and paused when he found something other than static. It was on one of the pauses that he first heard about the murder. A talk show was discussing it, and Sam had to concentrate to be able to understand their accent. As he and Dean had learned quickly, the place made up for its lack of geographical Southness with an overabundance of redneck culture.

"Earlier today, a local girl got a grisly surprise outside her college. Rachel was just leaving her programming lab when she found her roommate torn to ribbons. Police have picked her up as the most likely suspect and she's being questioned now."

"Now, Billy, I don't believe Rachel had anything to do with it."

"Why's that, Joe Bob?"

"I know that girl. Rachel's been an honor student her whole life, dual-enrolled college credits, made it to the national spelling bee. She's a good girl."

"Good girls go bad, Joe Bob. Over to Stan with the weather."

Sam turned off the radio and opened a new internet tab just as Dean came out of the bathroom. A quick search told Sam all he needed to know. "Get packed," he told Dean. "New case. Girl comes out of computer lab and findsher roommate shredded."

"You sure it's one of ours?" Dean asked.

"Look at the photos, Dean." Sam turned the laptop around. "That look human to you?"

Dean studied the article for a moment. "Guess not. All right, let's get out of this hick place. If I see another Confederate flag, I'll punch the dude."

"You and me both."

Rachel twisted uncomfortably in the metal chair. Her hands, cuffed to the table, made it even more difficult for her to crack her back the way she needed.

"Just tell us what we want to know," the detective across from her said wearily. They'd been locked in this room for hours already, and he wished she would just break. They had her at the crime scene covered in the victim's blood. They knew Rachel didn't like living with the vic. Motive and opportunity meant the case was open and shut. Phoning it in had just been an attempt to shift suspicion off herself.

"I have," Rachel insisted, shifting again.

"You know what those shifts are called?" the detective asked her. He leaned forward. "They're called tells. Every time you shift, you're lying. You're a bad liar, Rachel."

"I'm not lying," she insisted. "My back hurts."

He laughed. "You expect me to believe that? You're nineteen."

"And I have metal rods in my spine, my hips are degenerating, and I haven't had a day without pain in five years."

"Yeah. I totally believe that."

"You wanna see the scar?" Rachel challenged.

"Yes, actually."

"Then lift up the back of my shirt. It's right there, bright pink and shiny. Straight down the middle."

He stood up and circled behind her. She couldn't help tensing as she felt his hands on her. She hadn't actually expected him to look. She had always hated this ritual, hated never being believed, hated having to put her body on display to prove she was actually hurt.

He tugged her shirt up to reveal her back. Just as she'd promised, the scar ran down the center of her back, the skin puckering around the incision site from so many years before. He jabbed a finger right in the center and Rachel gasped, arching forward, clenching her teeth shut tight to keep from screaming, her eyes closed to hold back the tears.

He removed his finger and Rachel slumped forward, panting. Tears streamed down her face. She _would_ be one of the unlucky few who continued to have problems with a spinal fusion years after the fact.

He pulled her shirt back down and sat across from her again. She forced herself to sit up straight. She'd be damned if she let him intimidate her. "Satisfied?" she asked, proud of how her voice barely shook.

"Yes. Now, tell me what I want to know."

"I have nothing else to say," Rachel said, exasperated. "I already told you. I came out of the building. I stepped on something. I looked down. I called 911. That's it. That's all that happened."

"And I suppose you just happen to have someone who can put you somewhere else at the time Devon was killed."

"A roomful of people, actually. Devon left fifteen minutes before I did, and she was alive. My TA and twenty people who were also in the lab can vouch for that."

"And can they vouch for when you left?"

"The TA can. We have to print something out before we leave, and it's time-stamped."

"I'll follow up with him." The detective rose and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Rachel slumped forward, grinding her teeth. Her back was on fire, pain radiating out from where the man had dug his finger in. Rachel knew it had likely only been a light poke, but her nerves were so sensitive that leaning against a wall could put her in tears.

That wasn't to say she was a wimp, or that her pain tolerance was far below average. In fact, she could tolerate pain better than most; hell, her appendix had been bursting and scarring over every six months for close to five years before she even realized her abdomen hurt. Once they'd gotten her appendix out, several of her health problems had cleared up, but the doctors didn't believe that she hadn't noticed appendicitis. They had run all sorts of tests before giving up and sending her home.

But touch the middle of her back and she was done. She twisted again, trying to get that crack that been eluding her, but gave up when the door opened once more.

The same detective as before walked in, but this time he was accompanied by two men. One was slightly shorter than her older brother - maybe 6'4" - and had brown hair that curled down beneath his ears. He was looking at a file with dark brown eyes. The other was about three inches shorter and had his dark hair cut very short. His light green eyes took in every detail of the room.

"Your story checked out," the detective said, "but these nice FBI agents would like to talk to you."

"Can we get her uncuffed, please?" the taller man asked. The detective scowled as he freed her. Rachel had no idea what she'd done to piss him off so much. The agents waited until he'd left to sit down.

"Rachel, I'm Agent Deacon," the taller man said. "This is my partner, Agent May. We have some questions, if you don't mind."

"I don't really have a choice here, do I?" Rachel said. Something was off about these guys.

Deacon looked down and smiled. "No, I guess you don't."

May leaned forward. "Did you notice anything strange when you walked out?"

Rachel stared at him. "Other than my roommate smeared on the ground?" Her voice shook again. With everything that had happened, she still hadn't processed what she'd seen.

May laughed outright. Rachel frowned. Something was _definitely _wrong.

"Can I see your badges?" she asked. Her dad had worked with the FBI before, and she'd met some of them. She knew the type of people who worked for the FBI, both from experience and from her father's stories, and they didn't laugh or answer facetious questions during interrogation.

May and Deacon pulled out their badges from their suits and flipped them open. She reached for May's. She didn't have much experience with the badges, but they certainly _looked _legitimate. She missed the look passed between the agents while she examined the badge and ID card. It looked real enough, but something was still screaming at her.

Of course. "Why would the FBI be called in on a murder?" she asked, wiggling again. She felt her spine crackle.

Deacon said, "It's not the murder that concerns us so much as it is the way it was committed."

Rachel nodded. She didn't think people got pulped on a regular basis.

She also didn't think these guys were on the level, but she couldn't really ask to call their field office. She handed May his badge back.

"That was very thorough-" he began.

"But I forgot to ask about the field office, I know," Rachel said. "Not like I can really trust whatever number y'all give me if you're fake, and I don't have a phone on me, so."

"If we're fake," Deacon repeated.

"If you're FBI, I'll eat myself," Rachel said flatly. "I'd be surprised if you were law enforcement at any level."

"Oh, really? And why do you say that?" May asked.

"My dad worked for the feds. My mom works for county. You think I don't know fake fibbies when I see 'em?" Rachel was slipping back into how she spoke back home and swore at herself. She knew she was tired when she lost track of how she spoke.

May and Deacon looked at each other and shrugged. "Let's talk elsewhere," Deacon suggested.

Rachel got her bag back from one of the uniforms and followed the two men outside to a black car. She looked at them, eyebrows raised. "You really think I'm stupid enough to get into a car with two men I barely know when nobody knows where I am or when I'm supposed to be somewhere?"

The men traded looks. Rachel's frustration grew. "Tell me your names, at least."

The short man started laughing. "I like this one, Sammy."

The tall man twisted his head, obviously annoyed. "I'm Sam. Dean's the short one."

"You're just freakishly tall," Dean retorted.

"So - and this may be none of my business, I just want to get the lay of the land - are you dating or just close?" Rachel was surprised by her boldness. She was usually much quieter; on any other day, just being around two men would be enough to send her running, but she had used up her anxiety reserves for the day. All that was left was a burning curiosity.

"We're brothers," Dean said at the same time Sam asked, "Why does everyone think we're sleeping together?"

Rachel smiled. "Because you're closer than friends and look nothing alike." She pulled out her phone and turned it on.

"Fine. We've established that. Now will you please get in? We skipped lunch and we're starving."

Rachel hesitated. _Stupid_, she thought as she opened the door and slid into the back seat. She had barely buckled herself in when Dean started driving. She noticed neither of them wore seatbelts.

"So how did you know we weren't FBI?" Sam asked.

"Like I said: I know FBI when I see them. Your hair's too long, you both have a sense of humor, your aliases were from _Queen_, of all things, and you don't seem incompetent," Rachel said bluntly. Sam started laughing.

Dean just shook his head. "Are you drunk?"

"When would I have had time to get drunk?" she asked. She was feeling pleasantly vague.

"You're acting like you're drunk," Dean shot back, "slurring your words like that."

"I'm just tired. It's been a long day." That was only half the truth, but she'd be damned if she told them the rest. Dean pulled into a Biggerson's and parked.

"Let's talk in here," Dean said. "It's only four. The place is empty."

They got out of the car. Rachel stood up and finally felt the middle part of her back crack. Dean and Sam turned to look, Sam's hand already on the gun strapped to his hip. "What was that?" Dean asked.

"Relax. That was me," Rachel said. They looked at her.

"Explain?" Dean asked.

"My back's messed up." Rachel left it at that.

"But...you're _young_."

She smiled. "Welcome to the wonderful world of lifelong problems. Now, if you don't mind, I haven't eaten today, either."

Dean locked his car door and Rachel followed them in to the restaurant. Once they all had their food and were sitting in the corner furthest from the counter - Rachel with her back to the wall, just like she always did - she started rummaging through her bag and pulled out a medicine bottle. She shook two into her hands thought a moment, and added one more. She threw them into her mouth, popped the top off her drink, and swallowed half the cup.

Sam had reached for the bottle. "Methocarbam," he read.

"Painkiller," Rachel explained, "and the very definition of 'a bitter pill to swallow'."

"So you're telling us that you're on prescription painkillers," Dean said, an edge to his voice, "and you didn't think to tell us?"

"Is there a reason I should have?"

"Is there a reason you're taking three times the dose you're supposed to?" Sam asked, voice also hard.

Rachel rolled her eyes and grabbed the bottle back. "I have a high tolerance. Two is the minimum, and after that chair, the whole bottle probably wouldn't help. Now, talk. Who are you and why are you impersonating fibbies?"

Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "You've probably realized that what happened to your roommate couldn't possibly have been done in ten minutes."

Rachel gulped. Her burger, which had looked so delicious just moments before, suddenly sickened her. She put it down. "Yeah." She kept getting caught up in what was happening so she didn't have to think about stepping on her roommate's brain and finding her splattered on the concrete, but she couldn't hide from it forever.

"Well, here's the thing: it couldn't have happened in ten minutes by a human. There are other creatures that can do that."

"What, like a wolf?" Rachel asked. She suddenly remembered the time her dog had gotten attacked by a fox.

"No," Dean said. "Did your parents ever tell you monster stories?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Well, those monsters exist."

"_Dean_," Sam said. Rachel blinked at them mutely, wondering what kind of crazy she'd accidentally waded into.

"What? It's true. She asked for the truth."

Dean and Sam started bickering. Rachel watched them silently, mind whirling. She'd never believed in the supernatural. She'd never been able to make herself believe in ghosts, or werewolves, or God.

But that was because she'd never seen any evidence for any of them. Devon had been shredded in less than ten minutes, and the chunks were too uneven to have been done by a machine. Rachel pushed her food away from her so she could prop her head in her hands. The restaurant and the sound of the brothers' argument faded away as she dropped into her mind to think.

What _could _have done that to Devon? Not a person, not that quickly. Besides, there would have been footprints, and Rachel couldn't remember any. She remembered the scene, pushing away the emotions it brought with it - she could go to pieces later, when she was alone - and really thought about it from every angle. It would have taken a chainsaw to cause that much damage, but even that would have taken more than fifteen minutes. For Rachel to have seen nothing when she came out of the building, the guy would have needed at least a three-minute head start. The only thing she could think of that was able to shred a body in ten minutes was a wood chipper, and that would have turned everything into a fine mist, not left chunks lying around.

"Okay," she said, the restaurant abruptly coming into focus, "say I believe you. You guys just tool around the country looking to fight these things?"

Sam and Dean looked at her. "You believe us? Just like that?" Sam asked, a note of disbelief in his voice.

Rachel frowned at him. "I can't think of anything that causes that kind of damage in ten minutes."

Dean smiled. "Oh, Sammy. I like her a lot. And yes, that's what we do."

Rachel nodded, absorbing that information. Pushing thoughts of her roommate from her mind again, she asked, "So what is it that killed her?"

"We don't know yet," Dean said.

"Okay, so … um … what's out there?" Rachel's curiosity was taking over again now that her mind was clearer. She pulled her burger closer; the worst thing about her painkillers was that they left her starving for days afterward.

"How about you eat and we'll talk somewhere more private," Sam suggested, jerking his head at a family that had just come in. He and Dean had already finished.

Rachel polished off her meal in record time, thanks to the mix of painkillers, curiosity, and having not eaten for over a day.

"All right. Let's go check in to a hotel and we'll tell you all about what we do."

Rachel nodded. Her back cracked again when she stood up (thankfully less loudly this time), joined by her right knee groaning in protest. She hid her wince and followed the men out.

"That's an interesting bag," Sam said as Dean was unlocking the car.

Rachel smiled. "I made it last year."

"You _made _that?"

Rachel laughed. "You think something this poorly made would be in stores?"

"You did really well on the embroidery, though."

"Thanks," Rachel said, blushing. The painkillers were at full strength now, and she was becoming more like her usual self. They climbed in the car.

"So. Rachel. When you found Devon, did you smell anything weird? Like rotten eggs, or sulfur?" Dean asked as he started up the car.

Rachel thought a moment. "I don't think so, no."

"Any black smoke?"

"No."

"Did anything strange happen earlier? Lights flickering, people acting strangely, anything like that?"

"Well, I got really angry out of nowhere," Rachel said, frowning.

"When?"

"Right before I left the lab."

"So right around the time Devon got killed," Sam said.

"I - oh, geez. Yeah," Rachel said.

"How mad did you get?" Sam asked. "Irritated-mad or mad-mad?"

"Psychotically mad. I almost tried to throw the computer across the room," Rachel replied.

"And it just came out of nowhere?" Dean asked. "Nobody was picking on you or hitting you or anything?"

"No," Rachel said. "Nothing happened at all. I was just irrationally angry."

Dean and Sam looked at each other and shrugged. "Probably just a coincidence," Sam said. "Here looks good." Dean pulled into the motel Sam had pointed at. Sam went to check in while Rachel and Dean waited in the car.

"You're handling this better than anyone ever does," Dean said.

Rachel shrugged. "I was wondering when the next crisis was coming."

Dean turned around to look at her. "What?"

"It's been three years since my last hospitalization and two since my last major life change. That's longer than I've gone in my _life _without something going horribly wrong. This is in a different shape than I expected, but it's the same principle."

"Yeah, but still. You can't be handling this as well as you seem to be. Nobody handles it this well. Not unless you knew about it beforehand."

"You think I knew about this?" Rachel said.

"I think you knew something."

Rachel looked out the window, lips tight. "I didn't."

Just then Sam opened the car door. "Room fourteen," he said, climbing in. Dean drove around and parked right in front of the room.

In short order, Sam and Dean had moved in. They really only had one bag each, Rachel realized. Modern-day ascetics.

"So," Sam said. "What do you want to know?"

Sam and Dean each sat on a bed. Rachel sat on the desk chair.

"What kind of monsters exist?" she asked.

Dean pulled three beers out of his bag and handed one to Sam and one to Rachel. Rachel hesitated before she took it, and Dean noticed.

"What, you don't drink?" he asked sarcastically.

"Not often," she said.

"Oh, come on," Sam said. "I went to Stamford. Even there we all drank."

Rachel shrugged. "I don't have any friends that drink often - one of my friends has sworn she'll never drink in her life - so I've really only drunk wine with dinner sometimes."

"And there your parents make sure you don't get drunk," Sam said.

"Actually, no. Wine just makes me sick. I don't have a problem with liquor or beer."

"What's the most you've ever drunk?" Dean challenged.

Rachel smiled. "At the end of last school year, a girl on my hall invited me and my roommate over. I did about five vodka shots in less than an hour."

"Oh, so you got smashed _once_," Dean said.

"No, actually. I filled my coffee mug about two-thirds of the way with vodka and mixed it with some iced tea after that. Then I went and wrote a twelve-page paper."

"And how'd you do on the paper?" Dean asked.

"A," Rachel said. "Like I said, my tolerance to everything is really high. So, what kind of monsters exist?"

They talked for hours about monsters, demons, and ghosts. Rachel was fascinated by everything. Sam seemed more than willing to answer her questions, but Dean was more reluctant, and it was Dean who stood up at eight o'clock and said they should get her back to campus.

Just like that, Rachel was slammed with the reality of her day. She put down her barely-touched beer and followed Dean outside. Sam stayed to do "research", whatever that meant.

She slid into the front seat and buckled herself in quietly, fighting tears. Dean started the car and looked over.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Rachel shook her head. "Nothing."

"Nothing? You're gonna have to do better than that."

Rachel sighed. "Just - just drive. Please."

"Fine." Dean put the car in gear and they started moving.

After a minute or two of looking out the window, Rachel said quietly, "She was my best friend, you know. Devon. We lived together last year, too. She was nice, and sweet, and would kick me in the ass when I got too down about things I couldn't control. I was closer to her than I am to my own family. And I repay her by distracting myself so I don't have to feel it." She took a shuddering breath, tears rolling down her face. "That's what's wrong. She's been there for me through everything, and I'm a terrible friend."

Dean sighed. "No. You're not. Whenever a friend of mine dies, I keep myself busy. You're the same way."

Rachel wiped her eyes. "I just keep thinking - when I walk in to the room, what if her stuff's still there? What if it's already gone? What if her parents are there? What if my RA's been waiting for me? I don't know what's about to happen, and that always scares me." She took another deep breath, feeling her lungs shudder inside her chest. Another reminder she was falling apart.

Dean was quiet for a minute. "You'll deal with it. Whatever happens, you'll deal with it."

"Yeah," Rachel said. There was nothing else to say.

"Take out your phone," Dean said suddenly. Rachel did so, looking at him quizzically. He gave her his number and Sam's. "Call us if anything happens," he ordered. "Another murder, or if lights start flickering."

Rachel laughed. "Dean, these buildings are old. I'd be more worried if the lights _stopped _flickering."

Dean smiled. "Still."

"Okay." Rachel looked out the window again, lost in her thoughts once more. Dean kept an eye at her as he drove through the city.

"Where do you live?" he asked as he neared the campus.

"Frat complex," she said absentmindedly.

"You live in a _frat?_"

"No, I live _with_ a frat. Several of them, actually."

Dean shook his head in disbelief. "Your school is weird."

"I know."

They sat in silence until Dean rolled to a stop outside her building. "Thanks," Rachel said. "For everything."

Dean just nodded. Rachel got out of his car and walked up the steps, fishing her wallet out of her bag. She swiped her ID card to get into the building and started up the stairs to her room, but her RA called out to her.

She turned to go into the dorm's lounge a bit reluctantly. All she really wanted was to lie down and hug her pillow and let herself process everything.

"What's up?" she asked Laura.

"We're all gathering down here," Laura told her. "And there's some counselors here, too, in case you want to talk about -"

"Thanks," Rachel interrupted, "but right now I really just need to be alone."

Laura nodded. "If there's anything we can do," she said.

"Thanks," Rachel said automatically, turning back to the stairs.

Devon's stuff was, indeed, gone when she got to the room. Rachel curled up on her bed and hugged her pillow to herself, wishing she'd brought her Rocky and Bullwinkle plushies so she could hug something that had meaning. She hadn't bothered to turn on the light.

She spent the entire night finding Devon again, torturing herself with the memory, alternately sobbing from grief and pacing in rage, restraining herself from yelling only because people were likely already asleep.

"How'd it go?" Sam asked.

Dean shook his head and half-smiled. "I like that one, Sammy. She's something else. What'd you find? We're thinking vengeful spirit, right?"

Sam said, "Yes, and I found nothing."

"Nothing?" Dean repeated.

"This place is _old_," Sam told him. "The school Rachel goes to predates the country by almost a century. This town was founded a hundred and forty years before the Revolutionary War. There's almost four centuries of people dying here, and no way to narrow it down. Even if I focus on just deaths on that land, we're still talking thousands of people, and specifically suicides leaves hundreds."

Do you have any idea how many people have killed themselves at that school?"

Dean shook his head. "So we have nothing," he said. "I was hoping you'd have _good _news."

"Sorry."

Rachel got out of bed when the sky started to get lighter. She showered automatically. Her emotions had retreated at around four in the morning, leaving her numb.

She logged in to her laptop. It was only eight in the morning; she had plenty of time to make it to her 9:30.

Her mail was full of spam and notices about what had happened. Most of the emails went into the folder "death notices" - her school had one of the highest suicide rates in the nation - and the spam was deleted, leaving her with just two messages to read. One was the mailer sent out every week about events on campus. The other was from the dean's office to let her know that the memorial would be in the on-campus chapel that afternoon.

She checked her phone to see that her parents hadn't called yet. She was thankful for that; her mother would do her best to smother her over the phone, and her father would try to get her drop out yet again.

She goofed around on the internet for another hour and left for class.

Reminders of Devon's death were everywhere. People wore black. Classes were almost empty. The crime scene was still blocked off. Professors mentioned it at the beginning of class. Students cried.

Rachel watched it all, numb. She accepted the hugs Devon's friends gave her (though she couldn't recall meeting most of them) and said something appropriate when someone told her how sorry they were. She very occasionally had moments of awful clarity, where her emotions broke through the numbness, making her angry and sad for a minute or so until she got herself back under control.

One of those periods happened in the middle of psychology. Her professor was talking about classical conditioning and she was doodling in the margin, just a candle, when anger broke through. She grit her teeth and shaded in the flame, battling herself, but it grew into a rage so complete she couldn't see anything through a red haze.

Her pen snapped in half, breaking through the fog and grabbing her attention. She unclenched her fists and let the pieces drop onto her desk. Her hands were dripping with ink, and her page of notes was ruined. She ripped the paper out before the ink soaked onto the pages below it and pulled a new pen from her bag.

When they left class forty minutes later, Rachel was still lost in her thoughts. She had scribbled down a few notes, but knew they wouldn't be helpful at all. She'd just have to read the book.

Flashing lights caught her attention. Students were knotted around a tree right next to the building, and there were police cars parked with their lights flashing. Curious, Rachel walked over and joined the throng.

"What happened?" she asked the boy next to her.

"Someone else got shredded," he told her.

Rachel felt like she'd been punched in the gut. "Who? Do you know?"

He shook his head. "We're hoping they tell us soon."

Rachel pushed forward through the throng, wanting to see if Sam and Dean were at the scene yet. If they weren't, she'd call them, tell them there was another one.

She finally got close enough to see what was going on and instantly wished she hadn't. The girl's bag was one the ground, clawed but still recognizable. Her coat was laying ten feet away - it had turned into such a nice day Rachel guessed she'd been holding, rather than wearing, it.

Worst of all though, was that Rachel recognized both the coat and the bag. She'd eaten with their owner often enough. She turned and fled.

She managed to control her stomach until she got to a trash can. She threw up until there was nothing left, then dry-heaved some more. Eventually, she managed to take a deep breath and pulled out her phone.

Dean heard his phone chirping and pulled it out of his pocket. He glanced down and didn't recognize the number. He shrugged and pressed the talk button.

"Hello."

"Dean. It's Rachel. It happened again."

"You sure?" he asked, sitting forward and motioning to Sam.

"Yeah."

"I'm putting you on speaker. Tell us what happened." Dean hit the button, put the phone on the table, and ran to the room's closet for his fed suit. He tossed Sam his and started stripping down.

"I don't know what happened," Rachel said. She sounded like she was trying not to cry. "I came out of my psych class and there were cops. I went over and saw - I saw -" She tried to take a deep breath and failed. "Another girl got shredded," she choked out.

"Do you know who it is?" Sam asked, pulling his white shirt over his head.

"Her name's Callie. Callie Angstrom."

"Did you know her well?" Dean asked.

"Y-Yeah. She was one of my best friends."

Sam and Dean traded significant looks as they started on their ties. "All right, Rachel, we'll be right there," Sam said.

"Okay," she managed. The line went dead.

Sam sighed. "Damn. Two friends in two days?"

Dean shook his head in disbelief. "That borders on our luck." He grabbed his keys. "Come on, Sammy. Maybe we can figure out what this thing is."

"Woman in white?" Sam suggested as Dean pulled out of the parking lot.

Dean shook his head. "These are women, Sam. Wraith?"

"Their brains were intact. Werewolf?"

"Hearts were all there. Vengeful spirit?"

"Maybe, but why just those two? Rakshasa?"

"Those are really rare. We've run into, what, one? _Ever? _What about a skinwalker?"

"Those run in packs, and the heart was there. Maybe a witch?"

"We didn't find any hex bags on the last one, but it might be." Dean parked right outside the tape blocking off the crime scene. "Look sharp, Sammy." They got out of the car and pushed their way through the mass of curious students. _Death is the great attraction, _he thought. They flashed their badges to the uniform on the perimeter and he lifted up the tape for them.

Sam hid a smile. He still didn't know how Rachel had seen through them, but she was better than most of the police officers they'd met over the years.

"Detective Wilson," he greeted the man who had been convinced Rachel was the killer. "Same as the one yesterday?"

"Yep," Wilson said. "A girl named Callie Angstrom. I'd like to see where Stockton was today."

Dean knelt down to look at the blood on the bricks. "Torn to shreds. Any differences from the one yesterday?"

"Yeah," Wilson said. "The chunks are smaller."

"How so?" Sam asked, pulling out his notepad.

Wilson sighed. "Yesterday, if you remember, there was a hand that was mostly intact, and half the brain was still together. Here, there's nothing bigger than a finger."

"So what are we thinking?" Dean asked. "Killer had more time to pull the body apart before he was interrupted?"

"Looks that way."

"Thanks for your time," Sam said. He moved to the backpack, Dean to the coat. They searched quickly but thoroughly and found nothing strange.

"So," Sam muttered to Dean, "not a witch after all."

"Back to square one," Dean said in frustration. "All right. You go talk to Rachel, see if she remembers anything else from yesterday. I'll talk to whoever found this one."

"Sure you don't want Rachel?" Sam teased.

"Shut up and go," Dean said. "She lives in the third building of the frat complex." He strode off to talk to Wilson and saw Sam leave from the corner of his eye. "Wilson! Who found the body?"

"Guy named Derek Mathison," Wilson said. "Over by that tree."

"Thanks," Dean said, already walking over. When he got closer, he saw Derek had long brown hair tied in a ponytail and brown eyes. "Derek Mathison?"

The guy jerked. "Yeah."

"I'm Agent May with the FBI. Can you tell me what happened?"

"I already told the cops," he muttered.

"Then you won't mind telling me," Dean said, flashing a fake smile.

Mathison shrugged. "My class got out early. I was heading back to my dorm when I saw the blood and called 911. I didn't see anyone around."

"Did you smell anything weird?" Dean asked. "Sulfur, maybe?"

"No," Mathison said.

"See anything weird?"

"No."

"Anything at all strike you as strange?"

"No."

Dean sighed. "If you think of anything, give me a call." He handed Mathison his business card and went back over to the body. _What killed you?_

Rachel made it back to her room before she let herself begin to panic. Her breathing got faster, tears started rolling down her face, and her mind wiped itself of everything but that two of the most important people in her life had been killed. She rocked back and forth on the edge of her bed, hugging her pillow to her chest, choking on her breath, blinded by fear.

Rachel was so absorbed in her head's drama that she didn't hear the knock on the door. She didn't see him enter the room, holster his gun, close the door, and cross to the bed. She only reacted when she felt his hand on her shoulder. "Rachel?"

She choked again and made her eyes focus. Sam's face swam into view. He was kneeling on the ground in front of her, his face contorted - though if that was a trick of the light because of the tears in her eyes, she couldn't say.

"Y-Y-Yeah," she forced out, still rocking. Her breath became even more staccato.

"Rachel, can you breathe with me?" Sam asked. "Breathe in...and out...in...and out…."

Rachel tried to slow her breathing, but her throat kept fluttering closed halfway through and she kept choking on her own tongue.

Sam was patient, though. He shifted to sit next to her on the bed and put his arm around her shoulders gingerly, prepared to remove it if she cringed away, but she leaned a little into him. "Keep breathing," he told her softly. "In...and out…." She buried her face in the pillow, then pulled her glasses off her face and threw them onto the dresser next to her bed before burying her face again. She never stopped rocking, and Sam never stopped whispering encouragement.

Ten minutes later, she finally managed to get her breathing under control again. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Don't worry about it," Sam said.

"No, really," Rachel said. "You must think I'm some kind of nutjob."

"I don't," Sam said. "You've lost two people in two days. You're allowed to go to pieces."

Rachel wiped her eyes. "Didn't mean to drag you into it. Anyway, what can I do for you?" She turned her attention to him, pushing everything else to the back of her mind.

Sam stood up and moved to sit on the other bed so he could look at her while they talked. Looking at her face now, he wondered how she could look like nothing had ever happened; if it hadn't been for her red eyes, he would have had no idea she was crying just minutes earlier.

"Dean and I were just wondering if you remembered anything else about yesterday," he said.

Rachel shook her head. "I told you everything."

"What about today? They think Callie died about forty minutes before you called us."

"N - wait. Forty minutes? You're sure?"

"Yeah, they're pretty sure."

Rachel took a deep breath. "Remember how I told you yesterday that I got really angry all of a sudden?" Sam nodded. "Well, it happened again. Right around then."

Sam frowned. "Same anger as before? Sudden, irrational, overwhelming?"

"Yeah," she said. "I snapped my pen in half. I was furious."

"Well, that's interesting. I'm gonna call Dean, see what he makes of this." Sam stood up. "You'll be all right for a few minutes?"

"Sure," Rachel said. Sam left the room, pondering what he was going to tell his brother.

Dean answered his phone on the third ring. "What've you got?" he asked.

"Hey, so, remember how Rachel told us she got really mad right around the time Devon got killed?"

"Course."

"Well, it happened again at the same time Callie was killed."

"Oh, not good," Dean groaned. "Do you think she's the one doing this?"

"I don't think so," Sam said. "Not on purpose, anyway. She might just be tapping in to whatever's causing this to happen."

"You think she's a psychic?" Dean asked, lowering his voice.

"I don't know. Maybe. It's worth checking out."

Dean massaged his forehead. "I'll be over there as soon as I can." He closed his phone and started walking.


	2. Chapter 2

"So how did you get into this hunting stuff?" Rachel asked Sam while they waited for Dean.

"We were raised into it," Sam said. "A demon killed our mom, and Dad got into the life. Dragged me and Dean in with him."

"Sounds kinda harsh for kids," Rachel said without thinking. "Oh - no - I didn't mean - I just -"

Sam started laughing. "Relax. I felt the same way. What about you? Your parents push you into anything?"

Rachel shrugged. "As long as I do something violent, my dad's fine with it."

"Violent?" Sam repeated, eyebrows raised.

"I'm going into explosives design. My brother's going to gunsmithing school. My sister, rebel that she is, is going to be a high school guidance counselor. So did your father drill you on how to tell what you were hunting? Or do you have to Google everything?"

"Well, we learned what was what growing up," Sam said. "For rare stuff, we have to look through his journal."

"Is it organized by type of creature? Or do you have to read through everything and hope you find what you're looking for?"

"Read everything, actually. Why are you so curious?"

"Are you serious?" Rachel asked incredulously. "You've just told me one of the biggest secrets in the world. You're telling me that you hunt things that shouldn't exist. You're letting me in on something bigger and more important than I knew existed. Can you understand how I could be just a little interested in what's behind the curtain?"

"When you put it that way," Sam said. "It's just that most of the people who find out spend a day or two freaking out and then the rest of their lives trying to forget."

"Well, I'm not most people. My roommate and best friend have both been killed in the past 24 hours. I want to know what did it, and I want to know how to prevent it."

"We don't know what's doing it," Sam said. "Our best guess is vengeful spirit, but so many people have died around here and there's nothing to really connect the two other than the school - and you."

Rachel said, "I'm sure they had other friends in common."

"Nope. We interviewed everyone. Different clubs, different classes, different majors. You're the only link."

"I'm the only link? You're sure about that?"

"Yep. Not even the same hometown."

"We lived in the same hall last year," Rachel pointed out. "It could be that."

"So why was it your closest friends and not someone else?"

"Bad luck?" Rachel offered weakly.

"Not even you believe that," Sam said.

"I know," Rachel admitted, tears pricking her eyes again. "So … they died because of … because of me?"

"No," Sam said quickly. "No, they didn't."

Rachel bowed her head, willing herself to not cry. "But if I'm the only thing they have in common -"

"Stop. It's not because of you."

"Then why?" Rachel asked, her voice cracking. "Why are my friends getting killed?"

"I don't know," Sam said. "But we're going to find out, okay?"

Rachel nodded. "Yeah. Yeah. Can I do anything to help or will I just get in the way?"

Sam sighed. He hadn't wanted to get into this topic before Dean appeared.

"Dean and I think you might be able to help. That anger you get out of nowhere - has it happened before?"

"It used to happen all the time, when I was little," Rachel said. "It started happening again earlier this year, every couple of months, maybe. Is that important?"

"It might be. These flashes of anger - did they coincide with anything happening around you? People getting into fights, anything like that?"

"No," Rachel said, "not that I remember." She sighed. "I'm an angry person in general, Sam. It's probably just coincidence."

Sam was opening his mouth to answer when Dean opened the door. "Hey. Sam fill you in?"

"Yep," Rachel said as Dean closed the door and sat next to Sam.

"And the verdict?"

"It's probably nothing," Sam said.

"Dammit. You're sure there's no real connection?"

"None," Sam answered.

"Great," Dean snapped. "We have nothing to go on."

"I'm sorry," Rachel said.

Dean grimaced. "So. Vengeful spirit's still our best guess."

"Looks like," Sam said. "Rachel, do you know of anyone who died on campus recently?"

"There were two suicides last year," she offered.

"Did they have any connection with Callie and Devon?"

"One of them - Troy - he lived in the same building. The other was an upperclassman I didn't know."

"Let's look into Troy," Sam said. "Mind if I use your laptop?"

"Sure. Just let me log in."

- - -  
"What've we got?" Dean asked Sam softly. It was only eight, but Rachel had already fallen asleep against the wall. He couldn't blame her; she'd admitted she hadn't slept the night before, and she'd had a long day.

"Whole lot of nothing," Sam said in frustration from his spot at the desk that had, they assumed, belonged to her roommate. "They had no classes together, weren't in any clubs, didn't work together. What do you think, torch this kid's bones on the off chance it's him?"

"Might as well," Dean said. "If we're wrong, we'll know soon enough."

"We should leave a note," Sam said. "Let her know we're dealing with it."

Dean nodded and moved to the desk covered in book and the assorted detritus he figured came with the college life. He grabbed a beat-up copy of the periodic table and a pen and scribbled down,

R -

Went to deal with it. Back tomorrow.

D.

Sam exited out of the browser windows he had up and shut down the computer. He and Dean slipped out of the room.

"One thing that bothers me," Dean said as he started the car. "Why was she getting angry?"

Sam shrugged. "She said she was angry in general. It might have just been coincidence."

"Come on, Sam," Dean said, starting to get mad. "When is something like this ever coincidence?"

"I don't know, Dean," Sam snapped, frustrated as well. "Maybe this is the one time it is."

"Maybe so, Sammy, but are you willing to bet on it?"

"We'll know soon enough if we're right."

"Yeah, but if we're wrong, someone else dies."

"Do we have any other options right now, Dean?" Sam snarled. "This is the best lead we got."

They drove in silence the rest of the way. They didn't speak when they were disinterring the corpse, burning the body, or reburying the casket. It wasn't until they got back to the motel that Sam said, "Dean -"

"Save it," Dean interrupted him. "I'm going to bed." He left Sam no choice but to drop the subject.

They were woken at seven AM by Sam's phone buzzing. He reached out and flipped it open. "Yeah," he grunted, massaging his forehead.

"This Agent Deacon?" a voice asked.

"Yeah," Sam said again.

"We got another one out here on the campus. Right by the big sundial. It's a guy this time."

"Right. Thanks," Sam said, and hung up. He was awake now. "Dean. Dean!"

"Whazzat?" Dean said blearily, jerking awake.

"Wasn't Troy. There's another vic."

"Damn it," Dean moaned. They got ready with the efficiency of people used to working around each other, not bumping into each other or trying to do the same thing at the same time. Barely twenty minutes later they were in the Impala, heading back to campus.

"Think I should call Rachel?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. See if she knows who this one might be."

Sam dialed her and she picked up on the third ring. "Hello?" she said, voice a little hoarse.

"Rachel, hey, it's Sam. Turns out it wasn't Troy after all. There's been another one. This one is a guy. Any guesses?"

"Um," Rachel said. "The only guy friend I can think of is Geoff Thomas. We were lab partners last year in bio and we still talk sometimes."

"Okay," Sam said, scribbling it down on a piece of paper. "Thanks."

"Let me know if it's him," Rachel said, half-request and half-order.

"Definitely. Talk to you soon."

"Bye."

"Who is it?" Dean asked.

"She thinks it might be someone named Geoff Thomas. They were - get this - lab partners last year."

"Okay, so what's killing her friends?" Dean asked. "It isn't the suicide she knew. It isn't demon, it isn't werewolf or wendigo or vampire, so what the hell is it?"

"I don't know," Sam said. "Dad's journal didn't have anything. Google came up with nothing. It's nothing we've seen. I don't know where else to look."

"Well, buck up. Maybe we'll find something at this one." Dean parked the car on the grass next to the crime scene tape. He and Sam flashed their badges as they got out and ducked under the tape.

"How likely is that?"

"Not very, I'll give you that. But I am an eternal optimist."

"Since when?"

"Since now. Detective. What've you got?"

"Dead body. Wallet says he's Geoff Thomas. Bet you fifty bucks he's tied to Stockton."

"We're not stupid enough to take that bet," Sam said. "Was he done like the other two?"

"Shredded to nothing," the detective confirmed. "Pieces are even smaller now. I think he's refining his technique."

"Or he wasn't interrupted this time," Dean suggested.

"Yeah, that's possible," Wilson said. "Weird, though. I mean, three people in three days, all here, with no warning. You ever hear of something like that?"

"Usually it turns out there are signs," Dean said. "They just weren't seen."

"Yeah. Still. Gotta say, I'm glad you got called in on this one. This is too weird for me." Wilson crouched down. "Does yellow powder mean anything to you?"

That caught their attention. "Why?" Sam asked.

"We found some here. Lab's got a sample."

"Can we see what's left?"

"Yeah. We bagged it so the wind wouldn't blow it away."

Sam and Dean traded looks as they followed Wilson to the evidence techs. They were handed an evidence bag with about a gram of the stuff sealed inside. Sam felt it and said, "Texture's right." He opened it and sniffed. "Yep. Sulfur." He looked at Wilson. "How could you not know this was sulfur?" Wilson shrugged.

Dean said, "I bet this was at the other scenes, too. The wind must've picked it up before we got here."

"So we're looking for someone that's around sulfur a lot," Wilson said. "Maybe a chemist?"

"Yeah. Maybe," Sam said. "Mind if we start interviewing people?"

"Be my guest," Wilson said. "Three's a serial killer. It'll probably get kicked over to you anyway."

"Right. Let's get started." Sam and Dean left Wilson.

"So. Demon," Dean said. "We can deal with that."

"Yeah, but why is it here? What does it want?" Sam asked.

"Hell if I know," Dean said, "but how much you wanna bet it has something to do with the girl?"

"What girl?" Wilson said from behind them. Sam and Dean spun around to find him standing there, phone in his hand. "Stockton?"

"Yeah," Sam said, recovering quickly. "I mean, we don't think she's doing this. We think someone's doing this to her."

"Yeah, well, you want some more proof for that theory?" Wilson asked. "I told the station to let me know if anything came up on her. Early this morning, something did."

"Stop dancing around and tell us what happened," Dean ordered.

"Four different structure fires in four different cities at 3:17 this morning. Her twin sister's dorm in Fredericksburg, her parents' house in Bentonville, her grandmother's house in Baltimore, and her older brother's apartment building in Pittsburgh. Every member of her immediate family, killed at the same time on the same day. Little suspicious, wouldn't you say?"

"Extremely. Has anyone told Rachel about this yet?" Sam asked.

"Yep. Soon as the fires got put out and the departments started calling around for next of kin. Jumped from Fredericksburg to Baltimore to Warren County to Pittsburgh to here. She found out probably six o'clock this morning."

"Was anything left of the houses?" Dean asked.

"Parents' and grandparent's houses burned to the ground. From what I understand, there was a photograph left from the grandmother's place and almost nothing else. The brother's apartment and the sister's room were gutted."

"We'll go talk to her, see what she knows," Dean said.

"Yeah. You go do that," Wilson said. "I'll finish up here."

"Thanks for that," Sam said. "Let's go." He and Dean climbed back into the Impala.

"How do you want to play this?" Sam asked when Dean pulled out onto the road.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked.

"I mean, she's lost all of her family and three of her friends in four days. She was barely coping with Callie and Devon, and now this? And we're about to tell her there's a demon doing this and ask her if she has any idea why?"

"You got a better idea?"

"No, of course not. I'm just asking how we want to handle it."

Dean sighed. "I don't know, Sammy. Let's just wing it when we see how she's doing. You do your sympathetic puppy-dog face thing, I'll stand there awkwardly. It'll be great. We're here, anyway."

Dean was locking the car door when Sam said, "Oh, damn it, Dean. We called her after she found out."

Dean looked across the car at him. "What?"

"We called her to ask if she knew who the guy was at seven. She found out about her family less than an hour earlier."

"Well. This just got messier." Dean blew out a breath. "All right. Let's go."

They ran up the four flights of stairs to Rachel's room. When they knocked, there was no answer; when Dean tried the knob, it was locked.

"You got a bad feeling about this?" Sam murmured. Dean nodded and pulled out his lockpicks while Sam drew his gun.

It took next to no time for Dean to open Rachel's door. He would have liked to think it was because of his lockpicking prowess, but knew it was more likely just a crappy lock. He nodded at Sam and opened the door quickly, pulling his gun in the same move. They went in at the ready, not knowing what they'd find inside.

What they found was Rachel, sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at nothing. Tears rolled down her face, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Rachel?" Sam asked. She didn't respond. They put their guns away. Dean closed the door and sat down next to Rachel. Sam sat on the other side. "Rachel?" he asked again. Her only answer was to shiver. Sam looked at Dean over her head and saw they were both at a loss. Sam put his arm around her shoulders, just like he'd done when she was panicking two night before.

Rachel gasped at his touch. She turned and buried her face in his chest, starting to cry with great racking sobs that had to carry. Sam put his other arm around her and held her close, not knowing what else to do. Dean rested a hand lightly on her back. They looked at each other.

"Let her cry it out?" Dean suggested.

Sam nodded and tightened his grip. Dean rubbed small circles on her back until there was a knock at the door. Sam jerked his head and Dean stood up, gripping his pistol.

Dean opened the door to find a petite brunette. "Who are you?" she asked.

"Agent May with the FBI. And you are?"

"I'm the RA. What's going on? Who's crying?"

Dean let go of his gun. "Rachel."

"Is it about Devon?" Laura asked. "Losing her was hard on everyone…."

"Not just Devon," Dean said. "The other two victims were friends of hers, and her family was killed early this morning." Rachel sobbed even harder and Sam glared daggers at his brother's back.

"Oh, God," Laura said, putting her hand over her mouth. "I had no idea."

"Yeah," Dean said distractedly. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to know the procedure for withdrawing from here, would you? Something tells me Rachel isn't going to want to stay here."

"Oh. Um, yeah. There's some paperwork that has to be filled out. It's online somewhere. I can print it out for you," she offered.

Dean flashed a smile. "That would be great. Thanks."

"Yeah." Laura stood there awkwardly for a minute before going back to her room. Dean closed the door to Rachel's room and sat back down, laying his hand on her back again.

Slowly, her sobs quieted and her tears began to slow. When she could speak again, she whispered, "Please stop rubbing me. It hurts."

Dean pulled his hand away as if he'd been burned. "I'm sorry," he began.

"It's okay," she said, sniffling. "It just pulls my scar weird." She suddenly realized she was pressed against Sam and her cheeks flushed. She pulled away. "Jeez, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to fall apart like this. When did you get here, anyway? I didn't hear you come in."

"Around quarter to eight," Sam said.

"Quarter to - damn it. What time is it now?" She was at the wrong angle to see her clock.

"It's almost 8:30," Sam answered. There was a knock on the door and Dean got up to answer it. Laura handed him the forms and tried to look past him, but he was much larger than she was and easily blocked his view. She got the hint and left.

"We have good news and bad," Dean said, turning around and closing the door. "The good news is, we know what's attacking your friends and family. The bad news is, it's a demon and we don't know why. Do you have any idea?"

"No," Rachel said.

"Okay," Dean said. "We need to get you somewhere safe until we can figure this out. We have a friend up north. I'm going to call him up and ask if you can stay for a while."

Rachel blew out a breath. "Sure. Um, I probably need to let the school know somehow...jeez, what do I need for that?...Damn it." She felt herself get even more stressed.

"I got you," Dean said. "Your RA came by, and I asked her for withdrawal forms. If you just want to take a year off, you'll need different ones, but after everything that's happened, I didn't think you'd want to stay here."

"Thank you," Rachel said. "You thought right."

"You go ahead and start filling out the forms and I'll give Bobby a call," Dean said. He stepped outside and Rachel moved to the desk.

Bobby picked up on the first ring. "Hello."

"Hey, Bobby. It's Dean."

"What's wrong?"

"What, can't a guy call his friend just to talk?"

"You don't. What do you need?"

"I need a favor. See, we're working a case down in Williamsburg, in Virginia, and there's a girl here. Over the past three days, all of her friends here and every member of her immediate family's been killed by demons. She's pretty broken up about it, and Sam and I want to keep her safe."

Dean paused, wondering how to phrase his request. He must have taken too long to phrase it, though, since Bobby said, "So what do you need from me?"

"Well, Bobby, we were wondering if she could stay with you a little while."

"Define 'little while'," Bobby said.

"Until we find out why this demon's ganking everyone close to her."

"How are you going to explain why my place is safe?" Bobby asked. "You can't exactly explain demons are real."

Dean laughed nervously. "Thing is, Bobby, we already did. She took it pretty well, considering. Said she couldn't figure out what could have shredded her roommate so bad."

Bobby sighed. "Damn it, Dean, I'm not a halfway house," he said, but Dean knew he didn't mean it. When all was said and done, Bobby wouldn't turn away someone who was in danger and had nowhere else to go. He smiled through the phone. "All right, bring her here. I'll clear out one of the old rooms. What's her name, anyhow?"

"Her name's Rachel. She still has to do some paperwork and pack, though. We'll probably leave here tomorrow."

"Just call me when you're close," Bobby said, and hung up.

"Thanks," Dean muttered at the phone. He went back into Rachel's room and announced, "All right, we're set. You'll be staying with a man named Bobby Singer up in South Dakota. We leave tomorrow."

"Okay," Rachel said. Dean noticed she had only filled in three spaces.

"Man, you're slow," Dean said.

"My brain's fried, okay?" Rachel said. "I had to look at my driver's license to remember how my name was spelled."

"How about I fill this out," Sam said, reaching over and taking the forms from her. "You start packing. Dean, can you help her?"

"Yeah," Rachel said. She was so tired the room was blurring. She staggered, catching herself on the desk.

"How much sleep have you gotten since this all started?" Dean asked.

"If I fell asleep at 7:30 last night...maybe...two hours? Three?" Rachel guessed.

"How much have you eaten?"

Rachel thought. "I'm pretty sure the last time I ate was when we went to Biggerson's. I guess I just haven't been that hungry."

"Right," Dean said. "You got a suitcase? I'll help you pack."

In short order, everything Rachel had was in a suitcase or in garbage bags to take to the thrift store. Sam had occasionally asked her about a question he didn't know the answer to, but they were done by eleven.

"You just need to sign this," Sam said, filling in the last blank.

"Thank you," Rachel said, taking the pen from him. She scrawled across the bottom, her signature looping and stretched instead of its normal tightly-packed, space-saving self. That, more than anything, told her how out of sorts she was.

Rachel had never been one to be in touch with her emotions. She was usually taken by surprise when she found herself acting on emotion, crying and laughing and screaming alike. So when bad things popped up, she tended to not realize how bad it was until her work started slipping or she was lying in bed, unable to sleep and staring at the delicate skin of her wrists and knowing her pocketknife was in the drawer right next to her.

Seeing her signature so loopy was a physical reminder that she needed to get a grip on herself. She took a deep breath and put the pen down gently. "I guess I need to take this to the dean's office," she said.

"You go do that," Dean said. "Sammy and I will start packing the car. We'll leave this afternoon for your hometown. Bentonville, right?" Rachel nodded. "We'll spend the night there. You can do whatever it is you need to do with insurance and mortgages, and we'll leave for Bobby's in the morning."

Rachel shuddered a breath. "Thanks."

"Yeah." He threw her one of the lighter bags destined for the thrift store, and he and Sam picked up some of the heavier ones. They trekked down the stairs; when they got to the bottom and had put their first load in the car, Rachel handed Dean her ID card to get into the building and her room key so they could get in if the door locked itself, as it had a nasty habit of doing. She set off across campus to get to the dean's office and the men went back up to her room to get the rest of it.

The secretary at the office didn't want to accept the forms. In fact, she got so upset a few of the deans came out of their offices to see what was going on, and it was one of them who took the forms from her. He tried to convince her to stay until she said, "Just take the damn forms, because I'm leaving no matter what. I can't stay here after everything that's happened the past few days." He couldn't exactly argue with that.

Having dealt with that annoyance, Rachel went back to her dorm, stopping briefly in the mail room to give her mailbox key to the woman manning the counter. She slipped inside and went up to her floor slowly. The enormity of what she was doing hit her. She was turning her back on everything she'd ever worked for, everything she'd ever done, to run away with a couple guys she'd met three days before. It was stupid. Reckless. Borderline insane.

Then again, the past few days hadn't exactly been her definition of sane. Maybe sanity was relative.

Dean and Sam were lounging in the desk chairs. "Hey, Rachel," Dean greeted her. "We already ran to the thrift store and put your stuff in the car. Anything else you need to do here?"

"Just give the key to my RA." She suddenly thought of something and frowned. "Do you need to stay here a little longer and track this thing?"

"Nope," Sam said. "We know it's after you and we know it moves around. That's good enough for us."

"Okay then. Dean, can I have the key back?"

"Oh. Yeah." Dean handed her the key and her ID. "Meet you at the car."

Rachel nodded and left. Laura opened her door on the second knock and immediately engulfed her in a hug.

"You're leaving, then?" Laura asked. She was so short her head didn't clear Rachel's chest.

"Yeah," Rachel said, patting the back of Laura's head awkwardly. "I just came to give you my key. Paperwork's done and filed."

"I'm gonna miss you," Laura said, which struck Rachel as odd. They'd never talked beyond the polite small talk required of people who ran into each other occasionally.

"I'll miss you too," she lied. Laura sniffled and let go of her. Rachel handed the key over and hurried out before Laura tried to drag her into an emotional farewell scene that she would have to fake her way through.

She slid into the backseat of the Impala and closed the door firmly. "Ready to go?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Rachel answered. Dean started the car and began to drive off. Rachel looked back at the campus and couldn't help a single tear sliding down her cheek as she left her old life behind.


	3. Chapter 3

"That's funny," Sam said, looking at the map as Dean merged onto Highway 17.

"What?" Dean asked.

"The last case we worked was in Front Royal. Bentonville's not even ten miles away."

"Really," Dean said. "Think that's a coincidence?"

"Think they're tied?" Sam shot back.

"I don't know. Hey, Rachel!"

Rachel startled and looked away from the window. "Yeah?"

"You live near Front Royal?"

"Yeah. Biggest town in the county. Why?"

"We just wrapped up a vengeful spirit there before we came down to Williamsburg. Some chick from the Civil War named Belle Boyd."

"Belle Boyd was a vengeful spirit?" Rachel repeated, amused.

"You've heard of her?" Sam asked.

"You kidding me? Everyone knows Belle Boyd. The house she spied in is over on Chester Street. We went there for a second-grade field trip."

"We noticed the townsfolk seemed to be under the impression the South would rise again," Dean said jokingly.

"That's because they are," Rachel said dryly. "In case you missed it, most of the county is ag."

"Ag?" Sam repeated.

"Agriculture," Rachel explained. "In fact, my house is zoned ag." She swallowed as she realized her mistake. "Was zoned ag. It's a pretty insular place."

"We noticed," Sam said dryly. "How did they know we weren't from around there, anyway? It's not like there are only a hundred people there."

Rachel laughed for the first time in what felt like days. "You don't talk like it."

"Talk like what?"

"We tell imports because they talk different. You don't use_ y'all_ so much, you got an accent, and you use proper grammar."

"So do you," Dean said.

"My parents were imports," Rachel explained. "I learned to speak properly along with the way everyone else did. It's an effort to speak like this for about a week after I leave."

"So can you speak the way they did?" Dean asked.

"Y'all wan' me t' speak like them yokels? Whaddaya want me t'say?"

Dean almost swerved off the road he was laughing so hard. "Oh - oh, I'm sorry," he gasped, "but that's just too awesome."

"How do you do that?" Sam asked in between giggles. "Switch between them so fast?"

"I grew up both," Rachel explained. "I can do the three main Southern accents."

"Three?" Dean repeated. "There are three?"

"I call them drawl, hick, and marbles," Rachel said. "Drawl's the Scarlett O'Hara manner, hick's the typical redneck, marbles sounds like you're gargling marbles."

"Gargling marbles," Dean repeated, starting to laugh again. "You're gonna have to do that one for us later."

Rachel just smiled and went back to staring out the window.

Two hours later, Dean passed the sign for Front Royal. It was old, painted white with blue trim and lettering, and couldn't look any more kitschy if it tried.

"You need to go anywhere?" Dean asked. "Tell anyone bye?"

Rachel shook her head. "Don't have much here, to be honest. Grew up eight miles east of here, moved nine miles south. I had no friends here, my home is gone - I didn't even have a job here. The only thing around here I missed was being in the high school band, and even that was years ago."

"You were in the band?" Dean repeated. "Funny hats, the whole thing?"

"Funny hats, the whole thing," she confirmed. "I remember, my sister, she convinced a freshman he put his plume on backwards. He freaked out." She smiled fondly. "She's always been a joker."

"So what did you play?"

"I was middle brass - French horn, trumpet, flugelhorn, that sort of thing - and I ended up in charge of pit percussion my senior year."

"That's a change," Sam said, trying to keep her talking.

"Yeah, well, I was having a bit of a hard time with some medical stuff, so I couldn't march anymore."

"Your back?" Sam asked, trying to sound sympathetic.

"No, I was actually having some lung problems then. Turns out I'm allergic to acetaminophen, of all things.

"Wow. That sucks."

"That's just kinda how my life works," Rachel said dryly. "There's always something going wrong."

"Sounds like our lives, eh, Sammy?" Dean joked. Rachel winced, feeling like an idiot for complaining about her life when they'd been raised on fighting.

"I bet you guys have some stories," she said.

"Yeah," Dean said. "I remember this one time, there was a wendigo in Colorado, and we only found it because our dad had left us coordinates in his journal, which was locked up in a police station. I only found it 'cause I got arrested." He kept talking about the hunts they'd been on, Sam occasionally interjecting. Rachel listened, getting a new perspective on events she'd heard about from the news.

Dean had yet to run out of stories when they hit Baltimore and found the police station that had what was left of Rachel's grandmother's house. "Want me to come in?" Sam offered.

"No, that's all right. Thank you, though," Rachel said, climbing out of the car. She stretched her back out, making it pop so loudly even Dean winced, but she barely noticed.

When Rachel had jumped through all their hoops, signed all their paperwork, and spoken to what felt like everyone there, she was given a paper bag containing everything from her grandmother's house. She thanked the officer who had given it to her and went back out to the Impala, sliding in the backseat. "Good to go?" Dean asked.

"Yeah," Rachel said. "Now let's see what's in here." She opened the bag and reached in.

She pulled out a scorched teacup and wondered why they had bothered keeping it. Then came a glass swan that Rachel recognized as a gift from her for her grandmother's seventy-sixth birthday. She swallowed a lump in her throat and pulled out the third, and final, object.

Rachel knew what it was. She knew exactly where it had been in the house - on top of the TV cabinet in the living room, about a foot and a half from the right side - and that it had been in that same spot for close to twenty years. The silver was soot-streaked and partially melted now, but her brain could fill in the gaps without a problem.

It was a picture her parents had had taken when she was six months old. Her mother's brown hair had been styled to look like Farrah Fawcett's; her father's hair and beard were still entirely black. Her four-year-old brother was dressed in his best clothes, complete with an ugly, yellow-brown plaid vest, and sitting on their father's left knee. She and her twin sister were dressed identically in black dresses with thick white lace, their fine hair matching their pale faces and contrasting against their mother's dark clothes as they sat one on each knee. Even as a baby, her sister had an _Are you kidding me? _look on her face.

She didn't realize she was crying until she saw the first drop hit the glass right over her brother's face.

"Anything good?" Dean asked.

Rachel cleared her throat. "Family picture and a suncatcher. And a teacup, but really, who needs that?"

"Who indeed," Sam said. Silence fell except for the AC/DC Dean was playing.

They stopped in Greensburg for the night. Sam and Dean found a diner that was still open and dragged Rachel over. When Rachel said she wasn't hungry, Sam argued, "It's been two days. You need to eat."

Rachel just shrugged. She really wasn't hungry, but if it meant avoiding an argument, she'd try to force something down. She ordered a ham sandwich.

In the time it took her to take two bites, Dean finished a bacon cheeseburger combo and Sam was done with his salad. They stared at her.

"Look, guys, really. I'm not hungry," Rachel said. "If I try to eat any more, I'll get sick. Why do you care, anyway?"

A muscle in Sam's cheek twitched and he opened his mouth to speak, but it was Dean who said, "You haven't eaten for two days. You need fuel."

"I'm fueled," she said. "I'm being serious. I'll get sick. Look, I'll take the sandwich back to the motel, and I'll eat if I get hungry, okay?"

Sam and Dean looked at each other, and Rachel could see an entire conversation going on. She felt a hollow pang in her chest and had to look away. She and her sister had been that close, had been able to freak people out by speaking together sometimes. There were some situations where they just knew what the other would say, and they both got a kick out of convincing people that twin telepathy actually did exist. Amanda had been her best friend for the first thirteen years of her life - hell, she'd had to be, they were the only kids for miles and nobody at school would talk to Rachel - and even though she knew she'd never been Amanda's, she hadn't cared. As they'd grown up and Rachel's obvious health problems had resolved, leaving only the invisible problems and the scars, Rachel had found other friends. Still, nobody could replace her sister. Even when they went to different colleges and only saw each other over Christmas, during the summer, and for a few days scattered through the year, Rachel had always held on tight to her twin.

But now Amanda was gone, and for the first time in her life, Rachel had to live without her.

Sam knew Dean just wanted to get out of here and get some sleep, and Dean knew Sam wanted Rachel to eat. He just didn't know why his little brother was putting up such a fuss. She was plenty old enough to know when she wasn't hungry.

Dean knew he'd win eventually. He looked back at Rachel, mouth already opening to tell her to head out to the car while he paid - but the words died in his throat at the look on her face. He'd never seen somebody look so devastated. And given that he'd talked to people anywhere from minutes to months after they'd seen their spouses or siblings or friends get brutally murdered, that was saying something.

Then again, none of those people had lost their entire family and all of their friends within three days. Dean was willing to bet it was sinking in that she was completely alone except for the two people sitting across from her, neither of whom she'd known longer than three days and with whom she was roadtripping. Looking at Sam, Dean could tell he thought the same thing.

"Rachel?" Sam said gently, and Dean couldn't help the wave of relief that washed over him. Sam was a hell of a lot better with chick flick moments than Dean himself was.

Rachel seemed to shake herself. "Yeah, what's up?" she said brightly, her expression betraying nothing. Sam examined her closely, trying to find some hint of the sadness that had just been written plain as day, and failed. The girl was good.

Rachel didn't even realize she'd done it. She just knew somebody wanted something, and they came first; what they wanted was more important than how she felt, and since seeing someone feel bad tended to make other people feel bad, she had to clear her face. It was a simple equation, really, two inputs and an output, and it was one she'd been doing for so long it had become automatic.

Sam shook his head. "Nothing. We're just going to head out."

"Okay," Rachel said. She was a little confused; why hadn't they just gone ahead? She would have realized what was going on soon enough.

When they got to the motel, Dean fell on the couch. "I'll take the pull-out," he said. "Rachel, do you shower in the morning or at night?"

Rachel shrugged. "I usually do night, but either's fine," she said softly. It was just occurring to her that she was sleeping in a room with two much older men who could easily overpower her if they felt like it. _Stupid. Stupid, worthless little fuck-up._

"Go ahead and shower, then," Dean said, yawning. "Do you know how to handle a gun?"

Rachel almost looked insulted. "My brother's in gunsmithing school, of course I know how to handle a gun."

Sam half-smiled. Dean had walked right into that one. He pulled the .45 from his waistband and handed it to her. "Eject the clip and show me where the safety is," he ordered. Rachel had no problems, and he made her show him that she knew how to hold it without hurting herself. "Good. There's going to be one of these in the drawer of the nightstand, but only as a last resort. Something happens, you don't shoot unless Dean and I are both down. Got it?"

Rachel nodded, more than happy to leave any trouble to them. She'd shot a .45 before, sure, but it was so large in her hand and the kick was so strong she hadn't been able to hit a target from 14 yards. Part of that, she knew, was the gun; neither her father nor her brother had been able to get any accuracy at all, some of her brother's rounds even going into the dirt. Still, she'd stuck to the .22 her dad kept on hand for his wife. She was better with her rifle, anyway; for Christmas the year before, as soon as it was legal, her brother Sam had gotten her a Special Revelations he'd fixed up. On top of that, she'd never shot anyone before, and wasn't sure if she could.

"Go shower," Sam said. There was something in his expression she couldn't quite read. She dug her clothes and toiletries out of her small bag and went into the bathroom.

She had to pee, and when she looked down afterwards, her panties were red.

"For the love of -"she said, annoyed. She wasn't supposed to start for another week, for crying out loud! She swore inside her head and hastily wiped her underwear off, then folded some toilet paper to keep from bleeding onto the fabric even more. She left the bathroom and squatted down, careful of her movement, to dig through her bag.

"Forget something?" Dean asked, sounding amused. He had pulled out the bed sometime when she was in the bathroom. Rachel wanted to snap, but bit her tongue. At least now she knew why she wasn't hungry.

Sam watched her back closely. It was obvious something had changed in the short time she'd been in the bathroom; she was now visibly pissed about something. He couldn't help but wonder what, but the mystery cleared when he saw her slip something rectangular into her pocket. He had lived with a woman for two years, and he knew what it meant when they came out pissed and went right back in with something they were trying to hide. He saw Dean open his mouth to ask again, but Sam signaled him to back down.

Dean had the tact to wait until Rachel was in the shower to ask, "What was that all about?"

Sam shook his head. "Let it drop."

"I can just ask her, you know."

"Not if you want to keep your head on. She'll chew you out."

"Oh, so you're suddenly the expert on her?" Dean asked jokingly.

Sam turned to look at him. "Dean, what's the longest you've lived with a woman?"

"Two weeks," he said cockily.

Sam snorted. "I lived with one for two years. Think for a minute: a woman comes out of the bathroom, puts something in her pocket, goes right back in. What does that tell you?"

"She's on drugs," Dean said instantly. At the look Sam was giving him, he relented. "I don't know, okay?"

"She's on her period," Sam said. "That's why you can't ask her about it."

Sam watched, amused, as blood drained from Dean's face. "So - uh - how do we deal with it?"

"Deal with it?" Sam asked, trying hard not to laugh. "You really haven't had a long-term relationship, have you? We don't deal with it, Dean. We don't talk about it, we don't act differently, we pretend we don't know." The look on Dean's face sobered him up. "Jesus, Dean, you've really never done this before?"

Dean shook his head.

"Guess you're lucky you have me to keep you from putting your foot in your mouth, then," Sam said cheerfully. "Buck up."

Dean fell back on the bed and covered his face with a pillow. "She better not bleed on the backseat," he said, voice muffled.

At that, Sam burst out laughing. He couldn't help it. All the time they were growing up, it was Dean who knew everything about girls, Dean who picked them up, Dean who went on dates, Dean who gave him advice - and now the roles were reversed and Sam found it ridiculous.

Rachel heard the laughter and smiled sadly. She knew she was a drag to be around right now, and she was sure they had other things to be doing. She didn't want to think of herself as someone who dragged down the mood of everyone around her, but she had learned long ago she did that just by being there. Now that she was so upset, she was the effect would be worse. She was glad to see Sam and Dean weren't falling prey to her fun-sucking ways.

She picked one of her legs up to shave it and scowled as her hip pulled. She was tired of her body falling apart whenever it damn well pleased. When she pulled up her other leg, there was a small path of blood meandering down.

She swore in her head, eyes fixed on the blood. She knew her periods were heavy, but they'd never been heavy enough to track down her leg before, especially not within the first few hours. The swearing in her head bubbled over to swearing out loud. Could anything else go wrong this week?

Sam knocked on the door. "You okay in there?" he called. He and Dean had obviously heard her.

"Fine," she called back. "My back just pulled funny."

Sam raised an eyebrow and looked at Dean. They weren't buying that for a second; they'd been traveling all day without so much as a whimper, even though she'd squirmed around the backseat all afternoon and gotten a few cracks for her effort. After they'd stopped at a convenience store for Dean to fill up, she'd silently pulled a lumbar pillow from her suitcase and nobody had said a word about it.

So swearing when her back pulled was clearly out of character, but it was obvious she didn't want to talk about it. Sam shrugged and moved away, deciding to give her some space. Dean got up - his reaction when someone was keeping something from him was to go beat it out of them - but Sam shook his head. If Dean went barging in there, he was just going to upset her, and he knew she was already barely hanging on.

"Sam," Dean began, exasperated. "What does it -"

"Let her be," Sam cut him off. "She'll tell us if it's something we need to know."

Dean sighed. He wasn't sure why he felt so protective of her, other than that they'd promised to get her to Bobby's safe and sound. Part of it, he supposed, was pity - not just for losing everyone she cared about, but living in pain. Part of it was because there was a demon after her and she was vulnerable. Either way, he'd be glad when they got to Bobby's and could stop worrying about her.

She came out of the bathroom exhausted, but she knew she couldn't go to bed yet. She had to finish stretching her back out; even though it would hurt like a bitch, it had to be done or she'd spend a sleepless night trying not to cry from the stabbing pain her hips would put up.

She was in the middle of a butterfly on the bed when Dean's voice broke in. "What are you doing, getting ready for gym?" he teased. Sam was in the shower, so it was just the two of them.

Rachel waited until she came back up to answer. "Stretching out my back so I can sleep tonight."

"Some stretch," he said dryly.

Rachel laughed, switching to do a modified dragon stretch she'd learned in marching band. The pain knocked the breath from her lungs, but she forced herself through three of them. Panting heavily, she collapsed on the bed, closing her eyes as dizziness swamped her.

"You okay?"

"Peachy keen," she said sarcastically. She went to sit up and held back a hiss. Damn it, she was still too tight to move. She forced herself into a double pigeon and walked her hands forward, feeling it in her butt more than her hips.

Dean couldn't help but be curious. He'd never seen someone do a stretching regiment before bed, and he didn't know how to do most of what she was doing. "Can I join?"

Rachel paused and looked up, still bent in half. "Seriously? Why?"

Dean smiled. "I've never seen some of this stuff, and it seems like something I should know. Where'd you learn it?"

Rachel shrugged, sitting up. "Mostly physical therapy and online sites for back pain, but I got some of it from band. A lot of it's yoga poses that have been modified."

Dean was trying to get his legs into the position she had them in, and she smiled. "Not like that. Here." She unbent her legs and showed him how to stack them for the stretch she'd just been doing, wondering how he hadn't caught on. "Now just lean forward. I feel it in my glutes, but you'll probably feel it in your lower back."

Dean tried it. "Why do we feel it different places?"

Rachel smiled bitterly. "Can't bend my lower back enough. The rods don't have enough give."

The look on Dean's face told her he was trying to come up with something to say. She ignored it. "Come on. Clamshells next."

When Sam came out of the bathroom, it was to find his brother lying on his side across the bed, knees apart and ankles together. "What are you doing?" he asked, torn between amusement and worry for his mental health.

"Rachel's showing me some back stretches," Dean said. He actually sounded excited.

Sam bit his lip to keep from laughing. "Dad showed us a bunch of those."

"He showed us upper-back, Sammy," Dean said. "These are lower back. How the hell are you doing this? I'm already burning."

Sam turned and saw Rachel in the same position, lying sideways on her bed to face Dean. "Practice," she said dryly. "I do thirty of these a day, plus a couple others." She closed her legs, counted to five, and separated her knees again.

Dean just shook his head and sat up. "You're better than me," he said. "I got physical therapy once, after a broken arm. Went to one appointment and took off. Forgot all about the exercises."

"That's what I did, too, at first," Rachel said. "Then it hit this wasn't going to go away, and I knew I couldn't live like this forever, so I went back and paid attention this time."

"And the stretching helps?" Sam asked.

Rachel sat up. "A little. Enough to let me sleep."

Dean sat up too. "I'm gonna shower," he announced, and disappeared into the bathroom.

"He does that a lot," Sam told her, "just take off in the middle of a conversation."

"Really," Rachel said. Somehow, she wasn't surprised.

That night, Sam woke up to the sound of sudden movement. His hand curled around the Glock before he was even completely awake, had it aimed in the direction of the noise before his eyes were fully open. He blinked.

Rachel was sitting straight up, chest heaving, eyes wide and darting around the room. Sam had just opened his mouth to ask what was going on when she slumped back, asleep again. He looked at Dean, who had also opened his mouth, and shrugged. They'd ask her about it in the morning. Sam put his gun back on the nightstand, Dean put his under his pillow, and they went back to sleep.

When they asked her, she had no idea what they were talking about. As far as she was concerned, she'd slept the night through. Dean had floated the idea of possession, but Sam remembered something from a psych class he'd taken. "Night terrors," he said. "People wake up panicking, but don't usually remember doing it." Dean and Rachel had shrugged and agreed before they got back on the road.

Rachel alternated between sleeping and staring out the window for the rest of the drive. She'd grown up on a mountain, and her school had plenty of hills, so she'd never realized how flat the land could get. She could see for miles in any direction.

She didn't like it. She was used to the comforting sight of the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountain ranges surrounding her, used to being able to see for maybe thirty miles before the land rose to block her view. She felt naked and exposed without the comforting presence of high ground.

At long last, they pulled through the gates of an auto salvage yard. Rachel took a deep breath.

This was it.


	4. Chapter 4

A middle-aged man in a plaid flannel shirt met them on the porch. His beer belly and bushy beard made her relax; he looked like most of the men she knew from -

"Home" was the next word in the thought, but she pushed it away. She didn't have a home to go back to, not anymore. She swallowed a lump in her throat as Dean parked next to a clapped-out old pickup. He and Sam were out of the car in a flash. "Bobby!" she heard him call, and knew from his voice there would be a broad grin on his face. She took a deep breath and climbed out herself, wincing as she straightened up. She was _definitely_ not made for long car trips.

He let go of Dean and went to pull Sam into a hug. Rachel walked up the steps and had just put her foot on the porch when she heard her ankle give two loud cracks.

"The hell was that?" Bobby said, jerking Sam behind him and reaching for his shotgun.

"Sorry," Rachel said sheepishly. "That was me."

"You gotta get your back under control," Dean said, shaking his head with a smile. Sam stepped out from behind Bobby.

"That was my ankle, actually," she said softly. She'd made a fool of herself the first time she'd met Sam and Dean, effectively disabling her anxiety around them because it wasn't like she could embarrass herself any more than having a panic attack in front of them, but Bobby was still an unknown. She held out her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Singer," she said, not meeting his eyes.

"It's Bobby," he said, taking her hand. "It's nice to meet you, too. C'mon, grab your stuff. I cleared out a room for you."

"Thank you," she said.

Bobby was taken aback. He'd been expecting a shallow, stereotypical sorority girl, and instead he'd gotten a quiet girl with manners. Maybe the next few days wouldn't be so bad after all, especially since Sam and Dean were sticking around until they figured out what the demons wanted.

Once Rachel had unpacked, she came back downstairs to find Bobby starting to pull out pots and pans. "Anything I can do to help?" she offered. "Or will I just get in your way?"

Bobby eyed her. None of his other guests had offered to help him cook, but then, most of the people who stayed with him were hunters used to canned food and the occasional drive-through. "Know your way around a kitchen?"

Rachel nodded. "Dad made sure we all do." She bit her lip, belatedly remembering _we all_ was now _I_.

Bobby smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'd love some help. Dice these peppers while I deal with the chicken, would ya?"

Rachel felt herself relaxing as she moved into the kitchen. She'd always liked cooking, but she'd rarely had the chance since she'd moved into the dorm to find the kitchen four stories below her room. She rinsed and seeded the peppers quickly with the paring knife and started to cut.

Bobby kept one eye on her as he butterflied the chicken breasts. She was better with the knife than he had expected, and some of the tension had left her shoulders. It was clear to him that she needed to do something within her comfort zone after a decidedly strange and awful week. He may not be too happy about letting a stranger stay in his house, but she didn't seem bad. A little depressed, certainly, but he could understand that.

They made small talk as they worked, Rachel asking about the salvage yard and the creatures he'd hunted. Bobby found he didn't mind the conversation, which continued through dinner with Sam and Dean. The three men noticed she only picked at her food, but let it go.

After dinner, the conversation turned serious. Bobby, Dean, and Sam went over her life with a fine-tooth comb, trying to find anything to connect her to demons, and came up empty. By the time they were done, it was past midnight and Rachel could barely keep her eyes open. Giving up for the night, they sent her to bed.

"What do you think, Bobby?" Sam asked when they heard the door to her room close.

"I don't know," Bobby said, eyes roaming restlessly over the books piled on every surface in the room. "When a demon does something like this, the target's done something the demon doesn't like. The last time it happened was a coupla centuries ago, when someone got out of a deal."

"So Rachel made a deal and weaseled out on her end?" Dean asked. He stood. "Well, that's easy enough to fix."

"Sit down, you idjit," Bobby said. "Rachel woulda been nine when she made that deal. That ain't old enough to be binding, even by demon law."

"There's an age requirement for demon deals?" Sam asked disbelievingly.

"Of course there is. Age of consent. Every culture's got 'em. Demon's is thirteen." Seeing Sam and Dean look at him skeptically, he said, "Well, if it can be proven either party didn't fully understand the terms, the contract's null and void. The age limit was imposed to cut down on deals the demons lost to ignorance. You just ain't mature enough to deal until you're a teenager, by demon standards, anyway. That's why you don't see teenagers getting mauled by hellhounds, not unless they got a non-standard deal."

"What if she got a non-standard deal?" Sam asked.

"I think she woulda mentioned selling her soul," Bobby said. "Tell ya what, I'll do some more research tomorrow. What kinda hunts have you guys found since we talked?"

The next day, Rachel spent most of her time on the phone with various insurance companies. Her parents' cars had both been destroyed, and so had her brother's and grandmother's, so she had to go around and around with two car insurance companies; her parents' and grandmother's life insurance policies were with two different companies; even the homeowners' and renters' insurance policies were with different companies. By the end of the day, she'd had to call eight different businesses that all made her run around in circles. She would have put it off, but she'd been warned that there was a limited window of opportunity to get in contact with insurers. She had no idea how quickly that window would close, and she _really_didn't want it hanging over her head.

She hit the "end" button on her phone and checked the time: 4:45. She'd been on the phone for well over seven hours, sitting outside on the porch steps and arguing with dozens of customer service reps.

Wearily, she dialed the last number written down on the notebook sitting next to her. She had to deal with the bank to close down her parents' accounts and get everything switched over to her name. They offered to transfer the safety deposit box from the location in Front Royal, but she refused. She didn't know how long she'd be staying in South Dakota and would rather only pay for the transfer once.

It didn't occur to her until after she got off the phone that she needed to find out what was going on with the mortgage. She turned the air blue, the stress getting to her, and put her head in her hands. She felt tears streaming down her cheeks and hands and tried to breathe more deeply, acutely aware of the chilly evening air.

She couldn't do this anymore. They'd only died two days ago. She knew if she went onto any of the accounts she had on social networking sites her inbox would be overflowing. Her email would be bad enough, especially since she hadn't checked it in six days. After Devon, she hadn't wanted to see all the messages she'd gotten, and then Callie followed, and she'd put it off longer - and now, six deaths and four days later, it was time to face the music.

She pulled her head out of her hands and grabbed the notebook and pen. She needed to make a to-do list; maybe then this wouldn't all seem so overwhelming. _What do I need to do?_ she asked herself. As things popped into her head, she wrote:

_Cancel cell phones.__  
__Update banking information.__  
__Find out where mortgage was held.__  
__Call stockbroker.__  
__Update Dad's clock website.__  
__Call extended family - no memorial__  
__Find a job___

_Anything else?_ she wondered. She thought she'd gotten everything. She closed the notebook and stood up with a wince, feeling her vertebrae slowly realign into something resembling a column. Looking out on the salvage yard lit by the orange light of sunset, Rachel reflected on just how much her life had changed in five days.

She pulled her phone back out of her pocket and debated herself. She could call her family members now, but they would be just getting out of work. Decision made, she put her phone away. _Tonight._

Once she was inside, she pulled out her laptop and went back down to the table in the dining room. Mentally preparing herself, she logged into her email. _437 new messages_ greeted her. Her jaw dropped. She hadn't even been gone a week! It was going to take her forever to trawl through all of them.

_First things first._ She went through and clicked the checkbox next to anything that was spam, looking at nothing but the sender, and sent them straight to the trash. That cleared out fifty. _Better than nothing,_ she thought grimly, clicking the button to sort what was left by sender.

Fully half of the messages in her inbox were from the school. Counseling center, dean's office, the area director, campus police - they'd all wanted something. She skimmed them all, not particularly surprised by anything she'd been sent. The only one she didn't delete was the one confirming her withdrawal had gone through.

Sam, Dean, and Bobby traipsed in through the back door, wiping grease off their hands. "Hey, Rachel," Sam greeted her.

She looked over the top of the computer. "Hey. How you doing?"

"All right. You?"

"Fine."

"What are you up to?" Dean asked.

"Cleaning out my inbox. Emails piled up fast."

"I bet," Sam said. "How many did you get?"

"Well over four hundred," she said tiredly. "I'm down to about a hundred eighty."

Bobby opened the fridge and tossed Sam and Dean a beer each. "You want one, Rachel?" he asked.

"No, thanks," she said.

"She's a teetotaler," Sam teased.

"No, just not supposed to mix alcohol and meds," she said. "I took some painkillers a couple hours ago."

Bobby paused. "What're you on painkillers for?"

"My back's messed up pretty badly," she explained. "It's hurt every day for five years now, and there's no end in sight, so I got some meds for bad days. They take the edge off."

"Huh," Bobby said, leaning against the counter and taking a swig of his own beer. Rachel waded through fifteen more emails, propping her head in her left hand. Her eyes unfocused and she only took in every few words. She had gotten maybe half an hour of sleep the night before, and dealing with the jerks at the insurance companies had taken what energy she had.

"Do you have anything else to do tonight?" Sam asked, breaking through her stupor. She shook herself back to awareness.

"I thought I might call my cousin tonight. I'm sure she's heard what happened, but I need to double-check." She rubbed her eyes before looking back at her emails. "Do any of you know what happens with a mortgage if the house burns down before it's paid?"

"Nope," Bobby said for the three of them.

"Okay," Rachel said, pulling her notebook over and adding _Find out - mortgages and destruction_.

"Did you sleep last night?" Dean asked. He had noticed the dark circles under her eyes and her paleness the moment he'd come in.

"A little."

"Have you eaten today?" Rachel shook her head. "Why not?"

"I'm not hungry," she said. "What is it with you and food?"

"It's just that we haven't seen you eat in three days," Sam said.

Rachel frowned and looked up at the ceiling, counting back. "Damn. Didn't realize it had been that long."

"Well, it has been. Starving yourself won't help anything," Dean said.

Rachel scowled at him. "I'm not trying to starve myself!"

"Coulda fooled me," Sam said, but his tone told her he was joking; taking a closer look at Dean, she saw the wicked glint in his eye.

A lump formed in her throat. It wasn't that they reminded her of her siblings, because their teasing was always vicious and designed to hurt; it was more that they reminded her of the concept of big brothers, teasing but there to pull her out of a fire. It scared her a little bit to realize how completely attached she'd become to them so quickly. She didn't think she'd even trusted her _parents_ so much, or at least not since kindergarten.

She cleared her throat and went back to her email, trying to make her eyes focus again. She got through another few dozen messages, hearing the men talk but not really paying attention, just relaxing into the feeling of doing what needed to be done without having to hear screaming in the background.

Finally, _finally,_ her inbox was empty. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief that ended in a cough.

The coughs took over, wracking her body, deep and loud and brutal. She pushed the chair backward and tried to stand but fell back down onto the seat, bending over, one arm around her abdomen and the other covering her mouth. She couldn't see through the tears blinding her, couldn't hear over the crackling pops of her lungs and the barks of the coughs themselves. Somebody, she didn't know who, pounded her back once. She kept coughing, glad she was wearing short sleeves so the crap coming up from her lungs didn't ruin her clothes.

All at once, it stopped. She stayed bent, taking ragged breaths, tears streaming down her face for the second time that day as she felt her lungs pop and creak and expand like old leather. _And I never even smoked,_ she thought bitterly. Her breasts put too much pressure on her right forearm, which she suddenly noticed was throbbing. Her body was a bitch.

A sharp pain just under her left breast caught her attention next time she breathed in, and she swore at herself when her breath caught. That rib had been nothing but trouble for years now, hurting at the most inopportune times. The lower right side of her abdomen was sending out pulses of stabbing pain, and her fingers searched automatically to see if something was digging into her; when they found nothing, Rachel got even more pissed off at herself. She didn't know much about medicine, just enough to figure out which part of her was self-destructing this week, but she knew recurring pain at that spot was a bad sign.

Yeah. Her body _definitely_ wanted her dead.

She sat up slowly, taking her time, inventorying which pains would give her trouble and moving automatically to minimize the pain. She could hear the crackling snaps she made, but she had no sense of their volume.

"You okay there?" Sam asked, expression torn between worry and bemusement.

"Fine and dandy," she said, fingers exploring along her rib. She pushed down until she felt a snap, making the pain fade. She moved her hand to her right forearm and twisted until it popped; again, the pain lessened.

"What brought that on?" Bobby asked. He handed her a paper towel and a glass of water.

"Thanks." She gratefully wiped her arm free of the crap that had come out of her mouth, ignoring how badly she was shaking. "I don't know what brought it on. it happens sometimes - I damaged my lungs a couple years back, and this was the result." She shrugged helplessly. "I still don't know what triggers it."

"Well, you're just full of surprises, aren't ya?" Dean said happily. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, not expecting that reaction.

"Sorry." She wasn't sure why she said it other than to have something to say.

"Have you been to a doctor, at least?" Sam asked.

Rachel nodded. "For all the good it did me. Nobody ever knows what's going on with me."

Sam frowned. "You said you damaged your lungs? Can they fix the damage, at least?"

Rachel shook her head. "It's there for good, however long 'good' might be."

"Since you're gonna be stayin' here for a while," Bobby said, "anything else I might need to know? Got a plate in your skull or somethin'?"

Rachel laughed. "Not quite so drastic," she reassured him. "I have some rods in my spine, though, and a Tylenol allergy that caused that lung damage."

"Damn," Dean said. "Tylenol. That must've sucked growing up."

Rachel smiled. "It didn't actually develop until I was fifteen or sixteen. Course, I didn't figure out why I couldn't breathe until I was eighteen. Doctors thought I had asthma at first, but the tests kept coming back negative, so eventually I just got told to try not to die."

"Try not to die," Sam repeated. "Sounds like something Dad would say."

"That's 'cause he did say it," Bobby reminded him. Rachel tried not to laugh at the looks on the brothers' faces, knowing it would send her into another coughing fit. She took a sip of the water instead, pleasantly surprised to find Bobby was on well water. She turned back to her laptop and listened as they talked.

Booby let her help with dinner again that night. After dinner, she went outside to call her aunt. The call went straight to voicemail, and her mind kicked into overdrive wondering if something was wrong. She tamped down the anxiety and left a message asking for a call back.

She dialed her cousin next; again, it went straight to voicemail. She left another message and hung up. Sighing, she tapped her phone against her chin as she considered her next move. She could call again, risking annoying them, or she could go online and find their email addresses.

She stood up and moved back into the house, picking up her laptop. She could hear Sam, Dean, and Bobby in the living room; not wanting to interrupt, she set herself up at the dining room table. She made her way to her mail client, typed up the email, hit send, and logged out. She was about to exit out of the window when the word 'fire' caught her eye. She found it on the page and clicked on the headline that filled her with dread.

_Two structure fires may be connected to three yesterday_

She skimmed the article, searching for names and addresses. When she found them, she felt like the air had been ripped from her lungs. She wrapped her arms around herself, her mouth opened in a silent scream. Her extended family was getting killed off now. Her little cousins, Madison and Danielle, one of whom was about to start high school and the other of whom had just gotten accepted to one of the top engineering schools in the country, had died along with their parents, a homemaker and a sales executive. In another state, her cousins Evelyn and Katie, both hairdressers, had died with their father, a management consultant; stepmother, an interpreter; and stepsister, who was in middle school.

She felt the tears track down her face. Why was this happening? What had she done to bring such destruction down on her family? Should she just leave Bobby's house so the thing could just kill her? _No,_ a little voice said, _it had plenty of opportunity to kill you back at school. It doesn't want you. Who would?_ She shoved the last part of that thought away and buried her head in her hands, trying not to breathe too loudly.

Bobby saw her open her mouth, eyes wide and horrified, and stood up from his chair. Sam and Dean turned to see what had grabbed the older man's attention and were on their feet in an instant, moving toward her as she buried her face in her hands. Sam knelt in front of her, Dean standing just behind him and Bobby waiting in the doorway. There had been an unspoken agreement between the brothers since Sam had left Stanford that Sam would deal with the chick-flick moments that inevitably occurred. They waited for her to realize they were there, but when she didn't, Sam broke the silence.

"Rachel? You okay?"

Her mind went blank except for one question: _Tell them?_ She must have taken too long to decide, though, because gentle hands were tugging at hers. "Rachel?" Sam prompted. She let him pull her hands away. Not like it mattered anymore. "Are you okay?"

She opened her eyes and looked down into Sam's anxious face. He was kneeling, she realized, and bit her lip. She took a deep breath, then another, in preparation.

"The rest of my family. They're getting killed, too. Structure fires, even when nobody should be home." She looked at her computer screen, the article still up. "What does it want from me? What do I need to do to just make it stop?"

"You can't make it stop," Dean said. She closed her eyes. That was the answer she'd been afraid of. "Whatever this thing wants, you don't have it."

"Or I do," Rachel whispered, "and I just don't know it."

"Hey," Sam said. "We'll figure this out."

Rachel sniffled. "It don't matter. I ain't got no family left, none that I ever met, anyway." She heard herself slipping into the cadence of the place she'd grown up and hated herself just a little bit more for not keeping it together enough to speak clearly. "Why is this happening?" she whispered. It was a good thing she didn't expect an answer, because she didn't get one. She bowed her head again and bit her lip as she felt more tears forming. She was sick of crying.

She realized Sam was brushing his thumbs over her hands, trying to comfort her, and she choked up again. She hadn't even known them a week and they were trying to help her.

"It'll be okay," Sam said, even though he didn't know how. "We'll figure this out. We'll keep you safe. You'll be back to normal life sooner than you think."

"Normal life?" she repeated, barking out a harsh laugh. "My family done got themselves killed, my friends are all dead, school ain't happenin' for a long time, monsters exist. Normal flown the coop a while back." She knew she was out of control, knew it by the way she was speaking even if she couldn't feel the emotion behind it. Sometimes being numb scared the hell out of her. "Like it or not, I'm just here for the ride, least 'til I get myself back on my feet."

Dean couldn't stand the look of abject misery on her face. He pulled up some of his arrogance and said, "Hey, buck up. At least you're around my awesomeness."

Rachel tried to smile even as she cringed inside. Dean sounded like her brother always did just before he punched her. "Yeah," she agreed weakly. "Your awesomeness." She rolled her eyes up at the ceiling, a trick she'd learned years ago, to keep her tears from falling. Her head hurt enough already.

Dean and Bobby traded glances, neither knowing what to do. It was obvious Dean had said something wrong, but for the life of them, neither could figure out what. Bobby decided to change the subject.

"You mentioned getting back on your feet," he said. "How do you plan to do that?"

Rachel sniffled, wishing Sam would let go of her hands but terrified to do anything that might offend him. "I thought I might go to town tomorrow, see if anyone's hiring," she said. "Once I have enough saved up, I'll find an apartment or something. I don't want to impose on you longer than I have to."

Bobby waved a hand. "Don't worry about imposing, this place is plenty big enough."

Rachel bit her bottom lip yet again. There was another reason she wanted a job. "I have to do something," she said at last. "I can't just sit around all day."

Bobby sighed. He didn't want her out of the house and away from all the protections he had on the place, not yet. His eyes fell on the computer and he had an idea. "Tell ya what," he said. "I've been meanin' to update my books for a while, put them on the Internet so they can't be destroyed. I've just been really busy runnin' the yard. How about you help me with that? That way you learn about this stuff _and_ do something useful."

"Really?" Rachel asked, hating the way her voice broke.

"Really," Bobby confirmed. "You can start tomorrow, in fact."

"Thanks," she said, tears forming again. They were just being so _nice_ to her. Bobby was a damn good liar, but she was damn good at catching lies. She knew he hadn't been planning on updating his collection; the thought probably hadn't even crossed his mind. But he'd come up with something on the spot to give her a purpose, and if she'd been anyone else, she wouldn't have caught the lie.

Sam saw her eyes water again. He looked at Bobby helplessly, not knowing what to do. The only family member he could remember losing was his father, and then he'd had Dean right by his side, feeling the same things, remembering the same man. He couldn't even imagine losing everyone her cared about, moving halfway across the country to live with strangers, and finding out that monsters existed in less than a week. He probably would have lost his mind, but Rachel was helping around the house and talking about finding a job to get on with her life.

He looked back at her and saw the tears start to fall again. The look on her face killed him, so he stood up, pulling her with him, and folded her in a hug, careful not to rub her back.

That was her undoing. She clutched at him, tears pouring down her face as ugly sobs ripped from her throat. She was barely aware of being led to the couch, where she eventually fell asleep leaning against Sam.

Sam had stayed with Rachel on the couch all night. Dean had shot some barbs his way about sleeping with a girl he barely knew, but Sam had just flipped him the bird.

Rachel had woken up panicking seven times that he knew of. Unlike in the motel, she didn't move when she'd woken up the night before; the only things that changed were her eyes opening wide and her breathing picking up speed. He had wondered during her third night terror if that was why she seemed so tired, but had figured that she probably just needed somebody near her. He'd readjusted his grip and settled back into a comfortable position before sleep claimed him.

When Rachel woke up, it was to the unfamiliar sensation of being held. She couldn't remember ever waking up in someone's arms before, and she tried to shift to see who held her, but the arms tightened so she couldn't move. She struggled to turn her head so she could see something other than the back of the couch and was rewarded for her efforts when she finally managed to face the living room. Bobby was sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee. She could make out a newspaper next to him through the smears on her glasses - really, that's what she got for being stupid enough to fall asleep crying without taking them off - but he was looking at her.

She tried again to see who had her, but the arms just got tighter. She gave up with a grimace - her back was absolutely_killing_ her in this position - and figured that she'd know who had her sooner or later.

Dean entered the dining room with a mug of his own, glancing casually at the sofa and smirking when he saw she was awake. "Gonna lay there all day?" he called softly.

If Dean and Bobby were at the table, it was Sam who was holding her. "I'd get up if I could," she answered just as quietly. She didn't want to wake Sam up if she didn't have to.

Dean's smirk grew more pronounced when Rachel wiggled to try to crack her back and Sam's arms somehow got even tighter. "He's gonna strangle me if he doesn't let up," she joked, wondering how he wasn't awake yet. Wasn't he supposed to be a fearsome hunter, ready for any threat? How could he sleep through her wiggling and their conversation?

"I'll fix that," Dean said with an evil grin.

He started stalking toward them, but he hadn't gone ten feet when Bobby said, "Leave your brother alone, he'll wake up soon enough."

"But he's suffocating her," Dean said, the very picture of innocence. "What kind of person would I be if I left a helpless young woman in the grasp of a Sasquatch?"

Rachel smiled. "The kind who lets his brother sleep."

"You're no fun," Dean teased, relieved to see her in a better mood. Her eyes were still shadowed, but the smile was a good sign.

"Oh, honey, I'm a lot of fun," she teased right back, then blushed bright red when she realized how what she'd said could be taken, especially since she was still in a man's arms.

Dean started laughing at the look on her face. After a moment, Bobby started laughing too. They weren't idiots; they knew 'honey' was used all the time where she'd grown up. They knew just as well she hadn't meant it the way it came out.

The laughter woke Sam up. "What'd I miss?" he grunted.

Even Rachel laughed at that.


	5. Chapter 5

The next week settled into a kind of routine. The four of them would meet down in the kitchen for coffee and to make breakfast, which Rachel never ate; eating within two hours of waking up guaranteed she wouldn't be able to keep it down, and even though she averaged less than an hour of sleep a night, she didn't want to risk it.

Dean and Bobby went out to work on the cars people dropped off for Bobby to fix, while Sam looked for hunts and Rachel stayed inside to work on updating the library. Most of Bobby's books were too old for the scanner to reliably pick up the printing, which meant she had to type out every word. Rachel didn't mind - she had never even _imagined_ some of the things she was learning about, and copying was a sure way to encode information into her memory.

They ate lunch at one, usually sandwiches, before separating again to their respective tasks. At six, Bobby came inside and would start dinner with Rachel's help. After dinner, Sam, Dean, and Bobby would relax in the living room; Rachel would sit out there with them, not interacting much, sticking to typing out the book she was working on and throwing out the occasional joke. She would go to bed usually around eleven or midnight, the men staying downstairs, and cry into her pillow until sleep claimed her around two or three. She'd fall into a light sleep that always ended within ten minutes, spend an hour trying to fall asleep again, and repeat the cycle until she heard Bobby moving around, at which point she'd shower, dress, and go downstairs.

And repeat.

If they noticed the darkening circles under her eyes, they didn't mention it, for which she was grateful. They'd also gotten used to the popping of her skeleton and her near-constant wiggling, no longer twitching at snaps like the one that had made Bobby think they were under attack when she'd first met him. They were the first people who'd ever adjusted to it - even her parents had given her the evil eye, like she'd done it on purpose, and her mother had once accused her of doing it just to irritate them - and she was surprised by how good it felt to not be second-guessed about her own health. They still teased her about it, of course, because that's what guys did, but it was far more lighthearted than she was used to.

As nice as it was, she knew it couldn't last. Sam and Dean had to help people; it was just what they did. They would be leaving soon, and she'd be alone with Bobby. They got along fine, but Rachel still didn't know much about him.

Worst of all, she could feel herself getting antsy. She'd spent the first seventeen years of her life on a mountain where she and her siblings were the only kids for miles, and the next two alternating between a hilly area (where she and her siblings were, again, the only people their age for miles) and her college, which was built on a hilly marsh. She was used to being alone, but she wasn't designed to live on level ground, and she _definitely_ wasn't designed to be surrounded by piles of scrap metal that towered over her. On two sides of the house, she could see neverending plains; on the other two, the huge stacks of metal made her dizzy just looking at them. She was terrified to venture among the teetering piles of metal, despite knowing she was perfectly safe, and the wide spaces freaked her out, so she rarely left the house, and when she did, she only went as far as the porch. She was going stir-crazy, not that she'd let on. Her problems were not theirs, and they'd been so good to her. They'd been better to her than she had any right to hope for.

Rachel buried her head in her hands. _What should I do?_ she asked herself. She couldn't leave, not without anywhere to go, but she couldn't impose on Bobby much longer. She was torn between the part of her that wanted to be with people who wanted her around and the part of her that hated herself for taking up space.

She glared at the clock. 6:26 in the morning and she was wide awake, as usual. She'd hear Bobby's alarm go off in four minutes and the Winchesters' in nineteen. She knew what the alarms sounded like by now: Bobby was tuned into a country music station, the Winchesters had a recording of _Highway to Hell._ After hearing the song every morning for two weeks, she was deathly tired of it. She'd never liked country, but her father had tuned his radio to just such a station because the style made him angry enough to get out of bed. Her dad had woken to rage and never let it die.

That thought was enough to get her up out of bed and dressing. She hated wearing a shirt to bed - her chest choked her enough, the last thing she needed was fabric getting tangled around her neck in the middle of the night and cutting off her air further, and it saved her from having to put her arms above her head in the morning - so really all she had to fumble with were her bra, a button-up shirt, and jeans. The step she avoided might not have been a big deal to most people, but raising her arms over her head in the morning was a big no-no if she wanted to save herself the indignity of fainting like a spoiled, dainty princess. She definitely wanted to avoid that in a house full of men who had learned to wake and shoot at anything out of the ordinary.

Especially when she would be topless.

She bent over to pick up her discarded sweatpants and swore when she realized she couldn't straighten up again and there was a shooting pain running down the center of her right thigh. "For the love of -" she snarled before she had to stop and grab the bedpost because of the dizziness the pain brought.

She suddenly felt a thrum of pure hatred. She hated her body, wished it didn't exist so she could have gotten one that wasn't defective. One that wasn't ten percent metal and had degenerating hip joints that kept her from straightening, shot pain down her leg, and would need replacing sometime in her early- to mid-twenties. One that didn't land her in the hospital every year. One that wasn't allergic to Tylenol or cinnamon or dark soda. One that didn't creak at every movement like she was an old woman. One that was like her twin sister's, working perfectly. She wished for a body that was like everyone else's: maybe not perfect, but reliable.

Unfortunately, she didn't have time to dwell on that. She had ten minutes until she could get Bobby to help her out - she knew it generally took the older man that long to dress and get downstairs - but the problem was that the way she was feeling, it would take her ten minutes just to get to the door.

And she still had to get her jeans on.

Rachel swore silently. Again. She eyed her jeans, laying innocently over the footboard of the bed - right where she'd put them the night before, right where she'd laid out her clothes since she'd gotten to Bobby's - and did some mental calculations. She'd done this before, of course, and it had once been such a common occurrence she had been pleasantly surprised when she got out of bed to find she _could_ stand straight. The problem lay in that she hadn't accounted for the possibility of this happening when she'd gotten out of bed, so she was now standing in the middle of the room. She was still only six feet away, but it was going to hurt like hell to get over there, and then downstairs.

She shuffled over, biting her lip to stop herself from crying out. It took her far longer to get over there than she'd thought it would. _You're getting forgetful in your old age,_ she thought grimly. She had to sit on the bed to pull her pants on, then rock back and forth like a turtle on its shell to get them over her hips. By the time she was done, she could hear AC/DC blasting through the thin wall.

She tried to stand, but a wave of nausea and dizziness forced her to sit down before she fell down. She couldn't see anything; her vision had gone black, with only the occasional burst of white light. She swore yet again, this time silently because her throat refused to open enough to let her speak, and tried to tuck her head between her knees. Unfortunately, her back was so knotted she couldn't even look down without a flare of pain, so she looked up instead, hoping that would at least make it easier to beat the nausea.

The song had ended before she tried to stand again, moving more carefully this time. The world still spun around and her vision blurred, but she clung to the bedpost, panting and refusing to sit back down. _Damn it, getting out of bed and dressed shouldn't be so hard until I'm seventy,_ she thought furiously.

She started to shuffle her way to the door, still bent in half like an old woman, and heard the boys emerge from their room and start downstairs. She felt a flare of disappointment; she got the feeling Bobby was starting to know what it was like to have his body not respond so well, and she'd been hoping to get his help without spectators looking at her like a sideshow freak.

Too late now. She'd just have to go downstairs, try not to faint on the way, and do what needed to be done. Her heart fluttered and she splayed a hand across her chest, closing her eyes. _Not now, please, don't do this now!_ Her heart listened and calmed. She breathed a sigh of relief. If it had started palpitating again, she would deal, just like she always did. She just didn't want to deal.

_I hate this,_ she thought miserably, still shuffling her way to the door. From the noises downstairs, she could tell Sam and Dean were already down there, talking with Bobby. It had taken her far too long to get dressed.

She reached the door and decided she'd rest for just one minute. She panted as she leaned against the door, on her side because she couldn't straighten enough to support herself on her front and pressure on her hips was a bad idea. She stayed there, trying to breathe deeply and quell the nausea she knew wouldn't go away until she dealt with her damned hip.

The door was suddenly shaking, and she was terrified for a moment until her ears caught up and she realized someone was knocking.

"Yeah," she tried to call, but it came out as a whimper. Her vocal cords were still too tight to let her speak, and she closed her eyes to hold back the tears of frustration. She pounded on the door, once, to let whoever was out there know she wasn't dead.

"Rachel? You feeling okay?"

Damn it to hell. She was going to have to open the door. She was going to have to move again. She shoved herself up and swayed, gripping the doorknob just to hold something solid and feeling much, much older than nineteen. She opened the door with her right arm, her left pressed behind her back, and looked up into Dean's face.

"You okay?" he repeated. She shrugged, but couldn't help the gasp caused by the pain rippling through her back. She looked up at the ceiling, again holding back tears and dizziness.

"Rachel," he said, more urgently. "What's wrong?"

She cleared her throat and tried to speak again. "It's one of the bones in my hip," she whispered. "It's giving me trouble today, that's all."

"Oh." He looked very awkward all of a sudden.

"Can you give me a hand?"

"Yeah. What do you need?" Dean looked a bit relieved that there was something concrete he could do, and Rachel could have cried over the fact that he didn't ask what she needed until after he'd agreed.

Pain at this level of intensity made her entirely too emotional.

"Hold my shoulders," she said. Her right hand hit the doorjamb as she suddenly saw three of Dean spinning around her.

"What?" Dean said, confused, even as he settled his hands over her shoulders. "How will this help?"

Rachel answered, "I have to relocate my hip. I'm going to push myself forward. I'll probably end up grabbing you. Just don't let me fall." She didn't have the energy for complicated sentences, so they came out short and clipped.

"I can do that," Dean said, bracing himself in a manner she was supposed to find amusing. "Hit me with it."

Rachel closed her eyes and put both her hands on her hips. The old mental countdown started, a breath taken in with each number. _One...Two...Three!_ She held her breath on the last one and pushed her hips forward, hoping her feet were planted firmly enough. She could feel her hip popping back into place, wondering absentmindedly if the vertebrae were actually realigning themselves or if she was only thinking she'd felt them move.

Worse, she could hear her hip fix itself with a hollow popping noise. Her back cracked so loudly she thought she might have broken something. Just as she'd predicted, her arms came up to wrap around Dean's, holding herself firmly in place even as fire lanced through her. She wasn't aware of her wide, desperate eyes, or of her mouth opening in a scream only she could hear. Dean was aware of that and more: her sweating, her shaking, her small jerks as bones slid back into place. He was suddenly very glad he wasn't her.

She slumped, and he thought she'd lost consciousness - not that he'd blame her, the way she'd just relocated her own damned hip without painkillers or any real help - but no, her hands tightened on his arms, she'd just had her knees go weak for a second. She got her feet under her again and focused her eyes on the ceiling, sucking her lips in between her teeth and biting down, trying to keep the tears from spilling and almost succeeding. She let go of Dean to brush off the three tears that she'd let drop, then took a deep breath.

She suddenly realized she'd never asked anything remotely like that of him. She felt her face start to burn, from humiliation or embarrassment she wasn't quite sure. _Damn it, here it comes,_ she thought gloomily. Every time she had to ask someone new for help, they changed the way they behaved around her. They started treating her like she was made of glass and they'd break her if they weren't careful. She detested being made to feel like she was too fragile to live her own life. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

"Yeah," he said. "No problem. Anything else you need?"

"No, thanks."

"All right, then. Come down and drink your coffee." He turned and headed back down the hallway, getting to the stairs before he realized she wasn't behind him. "You coming or what?"

Rachel made herself move forward, nearly tripping over her own feet in surprise. He hadn't tried to help her walk, which was new. Everyone else she'd been forced to ask help from had tried to support her like she couldn't support her own weight. But Dean hadn't.

"I'm coming," she answered, smiling.

She was moving much more slowly than normal, and getting down the stairs was much more painful than it should have been. Her lower back and hips throbbed with every heartbeat, but at least the nerve pain in her leg had died down. She ended up needing the banister to support most of her weight.

"Hey, Rachel. Sleep in or something?" Sam teased her when she finally made it into the kitchen.

"Something," she replied, hobbling toward the coffee pot. She didn't remember it ever taking her this long to recover from such a banal occurrence. She poured herself a cup and went to turn around, but her leg crumpled under her and she had to grip the counter with her left hand. Her right slammed the coffee mug onto the counter much harder than she intended.

"You okay?" Bobby asked.

"Fine," she spat, red with embarrassment - not that they could see, since she was still facing the counter.

"Why don't you sit," Dean suggested, getting up. "Your hip must be killing you. I'll fix your coffee."

Rachel bit her lip, conflicted. She really wanted to pretend everything was okay, but it was obvious that she couldn't if her leg couldn't support her weight. _Compromise._

"I shouldn't sit for another ten minutes," she admitted sheepishly. "But - uh - do you mind grabbing the milk for me?"

"Sure." Dean grabbed the jug and plopped it on the counter next to her.

"Thanks." She lifted it up carefully, relieved to find that she could manage the weight if she used both hands.

"What's going on?" Sam asked.

Rachel shrugged. "Just a bit of a problem this morning. Nothing too major."

Dean shot her a glare, but she was at the wrong angle to see it. "What she means," he clarified, "is that she dislocated her hip this morning."

"You did what?" Bobby demanded.

"It's not that big a deal," she said, turning around carefully so she could lean on the counter and face them. "It used to happen all the time."

"But a dislocated hip?" Sam said. "How are you walking?"

Rachel rubbed her forehead. "I don't know. I'm not even entirely sure it _was_ dislocated, but that's the best answer I've found. The doctors I've seen don't know what it is, nobody I've talked to knows what it is, it just happens and I have to fix it."

"What is 'it'?" Sam asked.

Rachel sipped her coffee. "I can't stand up straight. I have nerve pain running down my right leg to the beginning of my kneecap. I can't walk in a straight line or without leaning on something. To fix it, I have to have somebody hold my shoulders while I push my hips forward and basically force things back into place."

"That sounds like it hurts," Sam said. Bobby watched with a small frown.

"Yeah," she said, "it does. But I manage. The only problem is that if I sit down too soon, I get stuck in that position again and have to redo it."

"You're gettin' old," Bobby teased.

"Yeah, feels like it," she said. "Do any of you happen to know of anywhere in town that's hiring?"

"You don't need to get a job," Bobby protested.

"That's where you're wrong," she said. "Transcribing these books is great and all, but I need to have something else to do. I need something on my resume other than 'retyped books of myths and legends'. And I _do_ need a resume," she continued hastily, seeing Sam and Dean open their mouths. "I can't hunt, and I can't sit in a car for days on end. I can't impose on you forever, Bobby, so I need to support myself somehow."

Bobby frowned. "I still don't like it. What if that demon comes after you?"

"It had plenty of time to do that, if that's what it wanted," Rachel pointed out. "It wanted something else, I think, for whatever reason."

"We thought about that," Dean admitted. "We still don't know what it wants. It might come after you anyway."

"I know," Rachel said. "But looking at the track record, what are the odds? If it wanted me, why would it go for the people around me before it came for me? Seems like a lot more work and a much bigger chance of getting caught and exorcized."

"She has a point," Sam said.

"I still don't like it," Bobby argued. "Until we catch this thing, I don't want to leave her vulnerable."

"I'm always vulnerable," she pointed out. "I could fall down the stairs and crack my head open. I could get hit by a car. I could have an allergic reaction to something I've never encountered before. I could have one of a thousand things could go wrong with my body - hell, I proved that this morning. All business requires some risk."

"There's a difference between taking a risk and being suicidal," Bobby snapped.

The argument was making her more determined. The best, and sometimes only, way to make her believe she was right was to argue with her about it. "I need to stay busy. I've been here for two weeks, and all I've done is transcribe books until my eyes bleed and eat your food. Bobby, please. I can't stay here forever. If I need to, I'll find an apartment and move out. But I can't keep doing this. I need to do something." She knew she'd said that repeatedly, but that was the core of her argument: she needed structure in her life, and she couldn't get that from sitting at a table all day and typing words she could barely see.

Bobby was quiet for a moment. "You'd really leave your only protection?"

Rachel rubbed her eyes. "Damn it. I didn't mean to say that. I just - I need this, Bobby. You have the salvage yard and the hunting and being needed. Sam and Dean have the hunting and the traveling. I have a dead family and old books for a project you came up with on the fly to make me feel like I wasn't useless. You're wonderful, you really are, but I need to get a little bit of normality. That means a job or school, and it's the middle of the semester." She looked at him pleadingly. "I need something else in my life."

Bobby sighed. Neither of them knew why they were behaving like he had the final say in whether she got a job when they both knew she would find one no matter what. "At least take an anti-possession charm," he said.

Rachel smiled, relieved. "Of course."

Bobby stood up. "Let's go, Dean. There's a Mustang out back to work on."

Three days later, Sam and Dean got back on the road to hunt down a werewolf in San Francisco and Rachel went to her job interview for a dispatch position at the Sioux City Sheriff's Office.


	6. Chapter 6

Three months later, Rachel was doing well. She'd just gotten off trainee status, had transcribed nearly two dozen books, and was starting to get over the deaths that had sent her running from Virginia. She was even looking at some of the colleges in her area, knowing she'd need at least an associate's and probably a master's if she wanted to do anything other than push pencils the rest of her life. She knew she had an advantage over the other applicants by virtue of the college she'd withdrawn from - it had a fantastic reputation which, coupled with an SAT score of 1450, almost guaranteed her admission. Now that she had settled in and was keeping busy, she was averaging around 900 calories a day and two hours of sleep a night.

So when the phone's ring broke the silence in the middle of the night, Rachel was awake to hear it. She slipped out of bed and got dressed, knowing that Bobby would pick it up and that it was most likely bad news, which meant he would drink himself into oblivion, which meant she had to be awake to turn him on his side on the off chance he would pass out. Even if he didn't drink himself into oblivion, it would be bad news, and she would rather be awake and dressed when he came to pass it on.

Bobby pounded on the door and she yanked it open. He looked frantic. "Dean called. Sam's missing."

"What? How?" Rachel leaned against the doorjamb as her vision went dark. _Not now, damn it._

"Apparently, Sam went into a diner and never came out. I'm gonna meet up with him down there. You coming?"

Rachel was torn. She really wanted to find Sam, but at the same time….

"You know I can't," she said. "I'd just get in your way. Let me know when you find him, all right?"

Bobby nodded and was gone. She heard the door slam a few minutes later, then the rumble of a truck's engine.

She slid to the ground and covered her face with her hands. Sam. _Missing._

_What the hell?_

How could he be missing? Did something get the drop on him somehow? Was he even still alive? If he wasn't, could she deal with that? He had, after all, been the person to tell her how the world actually worked. He was one of three people she respected.

She felt tears swarm down her cheeks, but she didn't care. It actually felt kind of good to cry without worrying about whether someone would hear her.

When she went in to work that day, she was more tense than usual. She almost yelled at a stupid man who apparently didn't realize that giving directions wasn't part of a dispatcher's job.

When she got back to Bobby's, she pulled out one of the books she'd been working on and kept typing. Anything to stay busy. She kept her phone on beside the computer, ringer on so she'd be sure to hear it when Bobby called.

She didn't bother making dinner, and she didn't bother going to bed. She checked her phone repeatedly, despite knowing the ringer was on. She finished the book she had been working on and started a primer on ghosts.

Her phone didn't ring until midmorning the next day. She answered before the first ring was through. "Did you find him?"

She heard a stuttering breath on the other end of the line, and her heart squeezed painfully. _No, you don't get to quit on me now_she told herself sternly, just as she had so many times.

Bobby cleared his throat. "Yeah. Yeah, we found 'im, but he's...he's in a bad way."

"How bad is bad?" she asked sharply, knowing that her face would be pinched if she could see it.

"He got stabbed," Bobby said. "In the back. He didn't make it."

_Didn't make it._The words repeated in her head, but she couldn't make herself believe them.

Sam Winchester was dead.

She forced herself to pull it together. "Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah," he said gruffly.

"Is Dean?"

There was a long pause. _Well, that answers that question._]

"How stupid is he thinking?" Rachel asked at last.

"Well, he threw me outta the room, so pretty damn stupid, is my guess. I'm heading back now."

Rachel leaned her head on her fist. "Anything you need me to do before you get here? Cook, research, call Dean?"

"No. But thanks."

"No problem." The line went dead, and Rachel stared at the phone for a moment, knuckles whitening.

Damn it all to hell. Sam was dead. One of her only surviving friends, the guy who had introduced her to everything, the man that had pulled her out of the fire - dead.

And Dean, she was sure, was almost as bad. She'd heard them described as 'codependent' before, and she didn't need to get past Psych 101 to know the term described them perfectly. Dean wouldn't survive without his little brother to look after. She wondered absently if there were antidepressants in one of the dozens of medical kits stashed around the house; Bobby had much stranger things lying around, after all. Of course, that probably meant he hadn't bothered to stock up on SSRIs like he'd stocked opiates, narcotics and NSAIDs. Hunters took out their rage in a semi-healthy way, and were much more prone to getting hurt than to becoming depressed.

She toyed with her phone, wondering if she should call him, but her anxiety won out. He wouldn't want to hear from her, she was sure, when he'd just lost the most important person to him. It didn't matter she could relate to him better than she was sure most people could, since she'd lost her twin sister and older brother barely three months earlier.

No, she decided, she would leave Dean Winchester alone for now, and when he came back to Bobby's, she would give him his space and let him come to her if he needed to talk.

She pulled off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. _Keep it together. You can't afford to fall apart again._

She only remembered bits and pieces of what had happened the last time she'd let emotion dictate her actions. She still bore scars she couldn't remember getting. She didn't know if she'd been attacked, if she'd instigated a fight, if she'd been drugged, if - the worst possibility of all - she'd done it to herself...all she knew was that she woke up in a hospital from blood loss and had blank spots in her memory. She couldn't let it happen again.

_Stay busy_. She stood and opened the cupboard under the kitchen sink. She'd clean.

She always had to stay busy, had to do something with her hands. Anytime bad news came knocking, she could either get busy or crack down the middle. She'd cracked three months ago, and she knew if she cracked this time there wouldn't be enough of her left to mend.

So she cleaned. She'd always cleaned when the tingle raced up the inside of her spine, demanding she do something, because she had to move or she'd start having what she thought of as localized seizures, usually her upper body twisting around with no real warning or her arm bending and straightening repeatedly until she held it down with her other hand. She cleaned when she was getting sick, because getting sick made her feel like being domestic for some reason she never had figured out. She cleaned when she saw dust piling up. She cleaned when her anxiety picked her up and she cleaned when her depression bottomed her out. Cleaning and cooking were just what she did.

Hours later, her knuckles were red, raw, and bleeding a little from the movement and moisture, but she really didn't care. She also didn't care that her back was killing her, because really, what was a little more pain on top of all the rest? She dumped the bucket of washwater out in the sink when she heard the door open and a familiar voice call out her name.

"In the kitchen," she called back. "Careful, floor's wet."

She heard the stomp of Bobby's boots and went back to rinsing out the bucket she'd been using. She heard him pause at the door and turned around. Bobby surveyed the place and saw the clean counters, dusted shelves, vacuumed carpet, and mopped floor.

"Well," he said at last, "as far as coping mechanisms go, it could be a lot worse."

Rachel flashed a quick smile. "I would've baked a couple months ago," she said, knowing he would understand what she meant: when she was living with her parents or in her dorm and knowing she was only accountable to herself. "Cleaning's close enough. It's domestic."

"Huh," Bobby said.

They didn't speak the rest of the day. Rachel stayed up again, typing the book on ghosts into her laptop, trying to keep busy so she could numb herself. Bobby went to bed early, and she was almost positive he'd doubled up on the sleeping pills he kept in the bathroom because there was no way he'd be able to rest without them.

She fell into a restless sleep around three and woke up at four, feeling even more tired from her short nap. She considered taking some of the same meds Bobby had, but ultimately decided she didn't know how that would interact with her pain meds - which, judging by the way her lower back was feeling, would be needed to get through her shift the next day. She went back to her book.

She and Bobby spent the morning quietly, and Rachel was almost glad to get out of the house for work. The silence was starting to get to her.

By the end of her shift, her nerves were stretched thin from the overwhelming stupidity of the 911 callers. There had been the usual assortment of stabbings, car accidents, and heart attacks, which she didn't mind, but having to send out ambulances for stubbed toes really made her angry. She didn't understand the people who called the emergency line for reasons that stupid.

When she was safely in the car she'd been loaned, she checked her phone. _1 missed call,_ it blinked at her. She hit the 'missed alerts' button and saw she'd missed Bobby. Frowning, she called him back.

"What?" he snapped.

"Touchy," she said. "I missed a call from you. What's up?"

She heard him sigh. "We got a problem. I think Dean decided to make a deal."

"What kind of deal?" she asked, heart pounding.

"What kinda deal do you think? A demon deal. Him for Sam."

"Is he okay?" The words were out before she could think them through.

"Stupid and stubborn, but other than that, yeah. He's fine. So's Sam. They're both here. Just wanted to give you a warning."

"Well, thanks," she said. "See you soon."

"Yeah," he confirmed, and hung up. She leaned forward to start her car, shaking her head in disbelief.

She knew how much it hurt to lose someone you were close to. She'd lost her twin sister, hadn't she? She knew all too well how Dean had justified it, rationalized it, and talked himself into thinking it was no big deal. If she'd known about demon deals three months ago, she would have made one in a heartbeat.

At the same time, she knew Sam was going to do the same thing for Dean when his contract came due. They were going to get sucked into an endlessly repeating cycle of demon deals - if, of course, the demons didn't get tired of dealing with them and just killed them instead.

She was so busy thinking she didn't remember the drive back to Singer Salvage or walking in the door. Sam was sitting in the living room, poring over an old book, and she stopped in the doorway. "How you doing?" she asked him.

He looked up and smiled. "Fine. You?"

Rachel looked at his face. _He doesn't know what Dean did_, she realized, so she just nodded and moved on.

There was a woman in the dining room, and she was pulling out a map. She stopped, suddenly unsure, feeling her old anxiety blindside her. She forced herself to keep moving. _Something to drink, _she reminded herself, _and then some more painkillers._ She hadn't taken them in quite a while, but sitting in a dining-room chair all night and a desk chair all day had done nothing for her back. She poured herself some coffee and turned around, only to come face to face with the woman. She jumped, sloshing coffee all over herself.

Her face flamed. "Sorry," she mumbled, putting the coffee down and hastily grabbing a towel.

"It's all right, honey. I'm Ellen."

"Rachel." She knelt down to mop up what she'd spilled. "Nice to meet you." She glanced up from the floor to take in Ellen's appearance. Mid to late thirties, Rachel thought, with reddish-brown hair and dark brown eyes.

"You, too." Ellen pulled down a coffee mug of her own. "Whiskey's great, but I need some caffeine, too. Mind?" Rachel shook her head and got out of the older woman's way. "You seem nervous," she remarked. "Anything in particular on your mind?"

Rachel shook her head again, voice frozen. She couldn't feel her face anymore.

"I don't believe it," they heard Bobby say in the living room. Ellen went out to see what was happening, her coffee only half-poured. Rachel let out a quiet sigh of relief and finished making her own drink before she went out.

"I know who could," Sam was saying. "Jake. That's why we'd been dragged to Cold Oak. The yellow-eyed demon wanted the best to break the lines."

Dean nodded slowly. "Makes sense."

"We gotta get there. Now," Bobby said. The three others nodded and went for the door. "Rachel, I'm sorry, but -"

"I understand," she cut him off. "Call when you're done and I'll have something hot waiting for you."

"Thanks." Bobby followed the others out.

Rachel sighed. She didn't know what was happening, but she knew it had something to do with Cold Oak, a demon with yellow eyes, someone named Jake, and the map on the table.

Four hours later, she'd pieced together enough of it to create a picture. Sam had been taken to Cold Oak, the most haunted town in America, with at least one other person. That person, whom she assumed to be Jake, had been chosen to break the iron rail lines Colt had laid down between the churches he'd built. There was a cemetery in the very center that was somehow important, and they'd gone to fix it.

Meanwhile, she was stuck sitting at Bobby's and doing nothing to help. They could die and she could do nothing. She hated that she was helpless.

She went back to the dining room and opened her computer. It was no good dwelling; she needed to keep herself busy. She pulled the book she was working on closer and started to type.

Her phone rang at two. She snatched it up. "Hello?"

"Rachel." It was a girl, which meant Ellen. "We're done."

"Is everyone all right?"

"Sam found out about Dean's deal, but yeah. We're all good. We're about three hours out."

"I'll see you when you get here. Are you going to want food first or sleep?"

She could tell Ellen was smiling when she answered. "Food, probably. We've been up all night, so screw the breakfast crap."

"Gotcha. No breakfast crap." She was smiling too, relieved it had gone well. "I'll find something. I take it you're not a vegetarian?"

"No," Ellen said, sounding horrified. "What kinda pansy do you think I am?"

"My sister was a vegetarian," she explained. "I just like to make sure."

"Oh. Well, no vegetarians here."

"Gotcha. I'll have something ready," she promised.

"Can't wait. See you."

"Bye." She hung up the phone and went into the kitchen to find something for them.

Making some fast calculations, she realized she had time to do lasagna right. She made the meat sauce first from the tomato cans Bobby had in the cupboard and the hot sausage in the freezer, which thawed quickly enough once she got it into a frying pan to brown. While the sauce was simmering, she made the noodles and the cheese mixture. She had it in the oven an hour before they were due back, so she sat back down at the table and popped some more painkillers. It felt good to let her mind disconnect and just not take anything in.

It felt good until someone was shaking her. "Rachel? Rachel!"

She popped back into herself and grabbed the hands on her shoulders. Her eyes focused sluggishly on the face in front of her. It was Dean, looking vaguely scared.

"Oh, hey," she said. "Didn't see y'all come in. Gimme a sec, I'll get the lasagna out." She tried to stand, only to be pushed back down.

"I'll get it, honey," Ellen said. "You just sit tight for a minute."

Glancing around, Rachel saw that Sam and Bobby had the same worried look on their faces. She scowled up at them. "Why are you all looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" Sam asked.

"Like I'm about to break," Rachel said bluntly. "I just zoned out for a few minutes. No big deal."

"It is a big deal," Bobby rumbled. "You didn't see us come in, didn't hear us calling you, didn't feel Dean touching you until he started shaking - it was like you weren't even here."

Rachel sighed. "Look, I've always had problems sleeping. Checking out like that is my version of REM. I'm sorry I didn't hear you come in, but it really isn't anything to worry about."

"If you say so," Sam said reluctantly.

"I do. Now let me up so I can feed you."

Dean barked out a laugh and dropped his hands. "Sassy! I like this one."

"So you've said," Rachel grumbled. She stood up slowly, letting her back crack its way to straightness. "Good to see you all are okay. Who's hungry?"

They followed her into the kitchen, where Ellen was shutting the oven door. "It looks like it came out well," Ellen told her. "Where'd you learn it, anyway?"

"My dad," Rachel mumbled, fighting down her blush. She hated how anxious she got around people she had yet to embarrass herself in front of. "He was a bit of a cooking snob."

"Looks like he passed the good recipes on to you," Ellen teased.

"I didn't think I had spaghetti sauce in my cupboard," Bobby said.

Rachel shrugged. "You didn't. But you had the tomatoes to make it." The look on Bobby's face was enough to send Sam, Dean, and Ellen into a fit of laughter. Rachel pulled out the plates, knowing the laughter was mostly due to the relief they'd all survived to fight another day.

Dinner that night was eaten as the first rays of sun poked through the piles of twisted scrap metal, illuminating the wooden table that looked like it had seen as many battles as its owner. The conversation flowed around the table, everyone in a good mood, and Rachel just leaned back and let herself soak in the feeling of happiness that permeated the room. Good food, good conversation, and good people. Three things that hadn't come together for her since she was in elementary school. She didn't contribute to the conversation much, if at all, but that was all right. She was there and she wasn't being told to leave, and that was enough.

For the first time in a long while, Rachel was happy.


End file.
